Torment
by Bears Love Tourists
Summary: After exploring an old mansion, Bakura starts having dreams about it. Dreams that get worse as he wanders deeper...and as a mysterious tattoo spreads...
1. Prologue: The Calling

I probably shouldn't be starting new stories the night before going on a week-long vacation, but I couldn't not post this after finishing the prologue. I'm not sure yet whether this will take place before the events of FF3 or if Bakura is essentially replacing Rei, but I suspect it might be the latter. We'll see. It is definitely set after the events of the anime. Also, I apologize for the beginning of the story; Jounouchi and Honda are both absolute twats, and to write them as anything other than twats would make them OOC, which goes against every fiber of my being, even though they kill the mood. They'll be making their way out of the fic as soon as I can boot them. Finally, I'm going to try to write this so that Yu-gi-oh fans can follow it even if they haven't played Fatal Frame 3, so if you're an FF3 fan, I apologize in advance if I bore you. I don't own either franchise (if I did, Fatal Frame 4 would be brought to America, and so would the uncut version of YGO), please read, please review, tell me if it's a good idea or a waste of brain juice.

_**Prologue: Zero Hour (The Calling)**_

"Guys, check this out!"

The group of teens jumped at the sound of their friend's shout, but they were not overly concerned. They had decided on a group hiking trip in the mountains, intending to spend four days traveling among a few local villages and campsites. Last night had been their second night, spent in a small village to the south, and now they were taking a small break in the midst of hiking to their next camping area. Jounouchi had wandered off to use the bushes, and it was his voice that now called to them.

Yugi was first to reach the clearing where his best friend waited with a grin stretching ear-to-ear on his face. When he saw what Jounouchi was pointing at, he made a much less complimentary face. "Jounouchi-kun, we're supposed to be hiking, not trespassing," he said.

"Trespassing?" Bakura asked as he, Anzu, and Honda pushed through the last of the underbrush to join them. Then he noticed what they were talking about. "Ah. I agree with Yugi-kun."

Jounouchi waved a hand at the crumbling ruin that once called itself a mansion. "It's not trespassing if no one lives there."

"It _is_ trespassing if someone owns it," Anzu reminded him sharply.

"Come on, who would want to own that rotting hulk?"

"It looks haunted," Honda said with a grin.

Anzu turned to him with a pained look on her face. "We're not ghost hunting," she told him.

"I think I know where we are." Bakura spoke quietly, but he caught everyone's attention. He looked taken aback when everyone stared at him, but he continued. "The people in the village mentioned it, remember? They said that supposedly there is a rift to the underworld here or something like that. According to legend, people once came here to meet the dead. It really is supposed to be haunted."

"Hah! After all we've been through together, no dead person is gonna scare me!" Jounouchi proclaimed, thumping his hand into his fist. He started for the sagging steps leading to the mansion's front door.

"Wait, Jounouchi-kun!" Yugi said, trotting after him. "We shouldn't really be wasting time here."

"Well, why not?" Honda asked, joining them. "Sounds like fun to me, and we've got plenty of daylight left."

"No way," Anzu said. "It's a bad idea to poke arouind in a house that might fall on our heads at any minute, haunted or not."

"I agree," Yugi said, nodding at her. "So that means you guys are outvoted."

Jounouchi and Honda made identical faces until Bakura spoke up again. "Actually, they're not. I think it would be a great adventure."

The others stared at him again, this time in disbelief, and he blushed. "What? I've always been interested in ghosts."

"You'd think being possessed by a ghost half the time would make them less interesting," the blond grumbled at him.

"On the contrary, it made me want to know more. I wanted to understand better what was happening to me," Bakura stated.

"Can't argue with that," Honda said. "Last one in is ghost chow!" He turned and sprinted for the entrance, ignoring Anzu's cry that running up the haphazard steps was a bad idea.

The entrance opened into a small alcove with a long hallway running from the back. There was almost no light, and the group was forced to take out their flashlights.

"Creepy," Jounouchi commented as they made their way single file down the narrow hall.

"You're the one who wanted to check it out," Anzu said from behind him.

"Yeah, yeah." He stopped as the hall split. "Which way, guys? Wait, the left is blocked. Guess that means we go right." He turned that way, Anzu following. Honda stopped long enough to shine his flashlight down the left branch.

"It's just a few beams and a broken door," he said. "We could push them down."

"Why bother when this way is clear?" Yugi asked, tugging him towards the right branch.

Bakura, bringing up the rear, chuckled at him, though the sound was strained.

The hall continued on the left, turning a couple of times before ending in a door that was still more or less on its hinges. Jounouchi pushed it open gently, and then he grinned and stretched as he moved into the cavernous room beyond. "All right! Let's look for some ghosts."

Anzu only looked at the roof in distrust, but the beams that held it up seemed to all be intact. Against the left wall was a staircase that had half collapsed. At the back of the room was a dark opening where another set of doors had once been. A few weak rays of sunlight filtered through, and Yugi walked back to peek into the next room. Its roof had fallen in, and beyond he could see a few timbers from other rooms and structures.

"This place must have been really big once," he said. "I wonder what happened."

"Didn't you hear Bakura-kun earlier?" Jounouchi said. "This house leads to the underworld. No one wants to live in a place like that."

"That's just a legend, Jounouchi-kun," Bakura said. "It isn't necessarily true."

"Yeah, I have yet to see a ghost," Honda grumbled.

"Thank God for that," Anzu told him. "Our past experience with spirits hasn't always been good."

"Sorry," Bakura said in a small voice.

"Don't do that," Yugi said. He walked back to the group and stood across from the white-haired teen. "We all know it's not your fault."

"There must be some reason why the Millennium Ring chose me," Bakura countered. "Why Zorc chose me." He averted his gaze, studying a ladder that against the wall.

"Ah, what's it matter?" Jounouchi said, slinging an arm around him. "Zorc's gone, the Millennium Items are gone, that whole deal's sealed and done. We don't have to worry about it anymore."

Bakura flinched away from him. "I still feel responsible. If I had been stronger, maybe I could have stopped him somehow."

"Not likely," Yugi told him. "It took all the power and knowledge Atem possessed, and a good bit of help from us as well. Bakura, you really don't have any reason for blaming yourself for what happened."

Bakura couldn't find an argument for that, but he continued to look uncomfortable.

"Now, where are all the ghosties hiding?" Jounouchi said, turning away to wander around the big room. "Hey, come on out, dead guys!"

Honda followed him. "Jounounchi, it's probably not a good idea to shout at ghosts like that…"

"Back off, bud, I know what I'm doing."

Anzu shook her head. "Those two can be so juvenile. How long do we have to stay here, Yugi?"

"Probably not long at all. The room beyond this one is too ruined, and the other way back in that hallway was blocked. This is the only place to see, and we've pretty much seen all of it just by standing here."

"So no ghosts after all, huh?" she stated more than asked.

"Doesn't look that way," Bakura said.

"Hey! Check out what I found!"

Honda came running back to the group with something in his hands, Jounouchi one step behind. "I saw it first," the blond grumbled, but Honda only grinned and held his new treasure out for the others to inspect.

"What the…?" Anzu said. "It looks like an old camera."

"An _ancient_ camera," Yugi amended. "Like one of the first ones ever made. What's something like this doing in here?"

"I dunno. It was just sitting in a corner," Honda said. "Bakura, are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"A ghost? Where?" Jounouchi wheeled around, shining his flashlight around.

Bakura ignored him completely. His focus was on the camera, which looked familiar to him. _I think I've seen this before, or a picture of it. But it can't be…_ "Can I hold it?" he asked, holding out his hands.

Honda handed the camera over, and Bakura held it up, playing his flashlight over its surface. "Oh wow," he murmured.

"What is it?" Yugi asked him.

"I can't be sure, but I think this might be a Camera Obscura," he said. "I'd have to take it home and look at some pictures to compare, but the markings look the same."

"A camera what-sa?" Jounouchi asked. "What the hell is that?"

"A Camera Obscura is a special camera invented by an occultist who lived in the eighteen hundreds," Bakura explained. "He wanted to use Western technology to prove Eastern beliefs, so he made three devices: a projector that could show scenes of the spirit world, a radio that could capture the thoughts of spirits, and this, a camera with a special lens and film that could capture images like the projector. It's also said that the Camera Obscura has exorcismal powers."

"Man, that's kind of creepy," Honda said.

Anzu gave him a scathing look. "Weren't you one of the ones who wanted to hunt for ghosts?"

"I didn't think we'd actually find any…"

"Someone must have thought they would find some," Yugi said. "Someone must have brought that camera here looking for the ghosts that are supposed to be here. But I wonder why they left it behind."

"Because it's broken." Bakura pressed the shutter button, and the camera gave a tired click. "Most of the spirit inventions are. They're still highly prized among collectors, though. You should take it back with you to sell, Honda. You could get quite a lot of money for it."

He held the camera back out, but Honda waved it away. "Tell you what. Since you're so interested, why don't you keep it? And how do you know all this stuff, anyways?"

"Didn't I say that I'm interested in ghosts?" Bakura cradled the camera in his hands, giving it a curious look. "I wonder if it could have exorcised _me_…"

"Probably not, since it's broken," Jounouchi pointed out. "Look, if there ain't no ghosts here, there's no point in sticking around. Let's get out of here."

"Gladly," Anzu said, starting for the door. She, Jounouchi, and Honda headed for the hall, but Bakura was still studying the camera, and Yugi hung back with him.

"You'll be able to see it better when we get outside," he said.

"Right," Bakura said. "I was just wondering if it really worked once." He rubbed the crust of dirt off the viewfinder with his sleeve and held the camera up to his eye. Yugi's face smiled at him through it.

"Maybe you can fix it and find out."

"I doubt it." Bakura swiveled as he spoke, looking all around the room through the camera. "It would still need the special film, and I have no idea…" He stopped, his train of thought derailing as the viewfinder came to rest on the door opposite the hall.

Someone was standing there. Bakura lost the ability to breathe. He knew that figure. His mind fumbled for an explanation to what he was seeing, because it just couldn't be possible. _There's no way…not here…not now…I must be hallucinating. Yes, that's it. I'm seeing what I want to see because of this house's legends and this camera's supposed abilities. But if I stop looking through the camera, it'll go away. It has to._

Somewhere in the background, he could hear Yugi talking, but Bakura couldn't understand his words. Slowly, he pulled the camera down.

The figure stayed.

"Amane," he breathed.

The girl turned and disappeared into the room beyond.

"Wait!" Bakura cried, running after her. He didn't notice that he no longer heard Yugi, he didn't realize that the room beyond was supposed to have fallen in. He saw only his long lost sister, and he had to reach her. He ran through the door and stopped cold.

This room wasn't a room at all anymore; now it was another hallway. This strange fact didn't register at all in Bakura's mind. All he noticed was that the air had suddenly gotten a lot colder. Color faded from the world around him, leaving everything portrayed in shades of black and white. _The Shadow Realm, _he thought, and this brought a fresh wave of panic. _Amane's in the Shadow Realm? I have to get her out!_

He ran forward, through a door at the far end, and found himself in a long, narrow courtyard. A large monument made of dozens of tombstones filled the right half of the courtyard, and snow fell gently from the dark sky above. _Snow? It's the middle of summer._

Amane was ahead of him, disappearing through a door on the far side, and Bakura forgot all about the snow when he saw her. "Come back!" he yelled as he ran across the courtyard. "Let me help you, Amane!"

He jerked the door open and found himself in another hall, this one much longer. Amane was nowhere in sight. Bakura paused; he didn't like the look of this hall. Part of the roof had fallen in halfway down, and snow fell through the hole, making a small drift on the floor. There was a dark opening near that drift, and the wall around the opening was latticed. Bakura didn't know if Amane had continued straight down the hall, or if she had gone through that opening. _One way to find out,_ he thought.

He trotted down the hall, clutching the useless camera tight to his chest. For some reason he expected to feel it clink against his Millennium Ring, even though he had lost the Ring last year after Yugi's duel against Atem. He stepped around the snow drift and stopped at the opening to peer in.

It was a closed alcove, its walls made of lattice as well. Through them, he could see another hallway running alongside the one he was in. A woman in an old-fashioned kimono stood on the other side, facing him. Her eyes were covered by bloody bandages.

Bakura gasped and backpedaled until he hit the wall. "Who are you?" he cried, holding up the useless camera like a weapon.

The woman faded from view.

Bakura stared at the spot until his eyes swam. Slowly, his breathing calmed down and he was able to look away from the spot. "A soul," he muttered aloud. "Someone caught, trapped in the Shadow Realm. Amane. I have to find Amane." He took off down the hall at a dead run.

The door beyond led to another courtyard. This one boasted a grassy area surrounded by a wooden walkway, and here snow fell again. In the middle grew a large tree surrounded by tall, thin stakes with red paper dolls on their tops, but Bakura barely noticed them. Beyond, he could see a grand set of double doors in a recessed section of the opposite wall, and Amane was just disappearing through those doors.

"Come back!" he called. He started around the grassy area, only to stop short at a hallway that ran back from the left wall. Another trapped soul stood there, this one a small girl with pigtails who wore the traditional clothing of a shrine priestess. "_Nii-san,"_ she whispered, staring up at him with pain-filled eyes.

"What?" Bakura asked, but she too faded away. He shook his head and went around to the double doors. The little girl troubled him, but he had a real sister who had just gone through here, and she was his first priority. He reached out to push the doors open.

Light burst forth when he touched them, obliterating first his sight, and then all his senses. _What the—did I just get hit with a penalty game?_ But that didn't make sense. He had to agree to a Shadow Game and then lose it first, and this didn't feel like a penalty game. It was too bright.

Then the light cleared away, and he found himself lying flat on his back, his arms and legs pinned down by something. Around him stood four more of the shrine maiden girls, long black hair framing their expressionless faces. Each one held a stake in her left hand and a hammer in her right. Bakura's eyes widened, and he forgot about Amane. He opened his mouth to ask them what they intended to do, but no sound came out.

The girls simultaneously dropped to their knees, positioning their stakes above his wrists and ankles. They raised their hammers high. They brought them down fast.

_CLANG._

"BAKURA!"

Bakura started violently and blinked his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Yugi asked. "You spaced out for a moment."

"N-no, I was…" He looked around in confusion. He was standing back in the ruined room where Honda had found the camera, facing the doors to the caved-in room. Yugi was looking at him in confusion and concern, and there was no trace of Amane or any shrine girls. "I…I'm fine, but I think I want to get out of this house now," he said. _Was all that…seeing Amane…chasing her through the old mansion…was it all just a…daydream? A hallucination? It felt so real._

"I agree," Yugi said. He was giving Bakura a concerned look. "Come on then, the others have left us already."

"Right." He let Yugi take the lead, and cast one last look back at the large room as they left. _Amane's dead,_ he chastised himself. _She's been dead for years. She couldn't possibly be here, or in the Shadow Realm. For that matter, there's no way to get to the Shadow Realm now. The Millennium Items are gone. I must have been hallucinating. I just need to get out of here and never come back._

He ignored the feeling that someone was watching him leave, someone who whispered words barely heard in the back of his mind.

_I don't want to see…anymore…_


	2. The Sign

Goodness, some people have managed to find this crack-fic, though it's still lacking for reviews (thank you, Kayrana). I've taken the time to go against my nature and outline the story, so updates are going to depend more on spare time than inspiration. Also, I've decided that Ryou is essentially replacing Rei (and Kei and Miku). Telling it any other way would essentially cut the best part of the game's story out, and I don't want that even if Ryou's story takes precedence. I'll also be giving the chapters names from the game, but not necessarily in the same order as the game. And I think that's all I have to say other than pretty please review. I'd like to know how I'm doing.

_**Hour I: The Sign**_

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The group made it to the campsite just as the sun was going down, and tomorrow they would hike the last mile to where Yugi's grandfather would pick them up. The old mansion had been the highlight of the trip in the eyes of Jounouchi and Honda, and they didn't stop chattering about it. Bakura tried to ignore them as they pitched the tents, cooked a few tins of soup, and played some friendly rounds of Duel Monsters. Anzu kept changing the subject, but her topics of conversation never lasted long.

Now they were finally bedding down. Anzu, being the only female, had her own small tent, but the four boys had to share a large one. Bakura had made sure to claim the wall farthest from Jounouchi, whom they had learned was a very restless sleeper. The blond boy was already asleep, and Bakura hoped he would drop off just as quickly. The daydream, or hallucination or whatever it had been, was still fresh in his mind, but he was sure a good night's rest would help him to forget it.

That was what he thought as he dropped into sleep.

_Cold._

_Snow falling._

_The clinking sound of metal hitting metal. A tiny sound, far away. Like a stake being hit by a mallet._

_The mansion loomed before him. And then, he was inside._

It was a dream to him, and in the manner of those who are dreaming, he did not question where he was or how he had gotten there. It was simply a fact that he was here, in this entrance hall that was not quite as ruined as it had been before, clutching a flashlight that barely pierced the darkness.

He was here, and he was scared. That was all he knew.

Bakura gripped his flashlight and started forward. This hall was just like the one in the house they had visited that day, except that it was in less of a state of disrepair. The wooden walls were warped and damp, and bits of tattered cloth that must have once been tapestries or curtains fluttered from beams in the ceiling, but the foundations and frames were all intact. The roof wouldn't be falling in on him. At periodic intervals along the walls were candles in sconces, but their light only just enough to make the shadows more menacing.

Amane was in here…somewhere. He remembered that, and it gave him strength.

He stopped at the right branch. A few steps away the hall also took a left branch. Bakura thought about trying that way, but a small noise reached his ears from the right branch. _Is someone else in here?_ he thought, and he turned down that way. The hall took a sharp left turn and ended in a door. Bakura hesitated, but he pushed the door open.

Beyond was the large room. To his left were the stairs, now intact and leading to a second level, and further along the wall to his right was a ladder leading to a raised platform. The middle of the room had a raised wooden floor with a hearth in the center. The double doors in the back wall were closed. Like the hall, there were candles in sconces by the doors.

Bakura went straight to the back, picking his way around the hearth. Little puffs of dust rose from his footsteps, and the rotting wood creaked. It seemed solid enough, though, and he didn't think that it would cave in. He made it to the doors and tried them.

Locked. Bakura turned around and played his flashlight around the room. The ladder was closest to him, so he started for it, but he froze even as he put his hand on a rung.

He had heard a noise behind him, from the direction of the stairs. Was it a footstep? Was there someone else here after all? "Who's there?" he called, making his way to the stairs and shining his flashlight up into the room above.

A woman walked by the opening, paying him no heed at all.

Bakura gasped and dropped the flashlight. Its light spiraled around the room until it clattered to the floor and rolled to a stop, casting its beam against the nearest wall. The light's afterimage left spots in his eyes, and he shook his head in an effort to get rid of them. _Calm down,_ he told himself. _Calm down. Someone else is here. Maybe we can help each other._

He didn't think about what they might need help from. In that curious manner of dreams, he just knew. There was something in this place that was not friendly. Something he had to avoid.

Picking up the flashlight, he started up the stairs.

The small room at the top had drawers and jars scattered around the walls, but nothing else. It seemed to be some kind of store room. There was another door in the far corner, closed. Bakura guessed that the woman must have gone through it.

He tried a few of the drawers. Some had been warped closed by the dampness, and others contained nothing more than some cloths that crumbled to dust at his touch. Similarly, some of the jars were empty, and others had some black, stinking liquid in the bottom. In the corner opposite the closed door was a mirror covered by a cloth. In the closest corner, something reflected light back at him.

Bakura frowned and bent to pick the object up. "A camera?" he murmured.

Not just any camera. The Camera Obscura.

It was old, but it still seemed functional. He flipped open the back to find that it still had film, ancient as it was. Raising the camera to his eye, he focused it downstairs.

A woman and a small girl in old fashioned kimonos looked back up at him.

He hit the shutter button on sheer reflex, and the flash blinded him again. He backed up, stumbling over a jar, and nearly fell. His vision had returned by the time he steadied himself.

He had dropped both the camera and the flashlight this time. Bakura picked up the flashlight first, and trained it down into the hearth room below. There was no sign of anyone. _It works,_ he thought, picking up the camera too. _The camera works. Whatever is here, I can use the camera to keep it away. But what about that woman?_

He did not question how he knew that the first woman was alive and the other two were not. He only knew, and that was enough.

He opened the door at the back, grimacing at the faint rotten odor that came through it. Standing in the frame, he listened for the sound of more footsteps, but instead a faint but steady _clink, clink, clink_ reached his ears. It was the sound of metal striking metal. Bakura frowned, sure that he had heard that sound before, but he couldn't remember when.

The door had opened onto another hall. There was a barred window in the left wall, and the hall ended in another corridor beyond that. He started down it, pausing to look through the window into another hall.

He was beginning to think that this mansion had more halls than rooms.

The noise was coming from farther down, beyond the fork. Bakura walked to it and looked both ways. The left fork turned to the right after a few meters, and the right fork turned to the left. He got the impression that the corridor actually enclosed a small room. He chose to go right, and walked around to find that the hall did indeed turn to the left again, outlining a room set in the center. The clinking sound seemed to come from the room, but he couldn't see a door. Bakura walked around the next corner, and this time he saw a tiny window, no more than a slit, at eye-level in the room's wall. The clinking did indeed emanate from it, and cautiously he put the camera to his eye as he walked toward it. Whatever was making that sound, he didn't think it was nice.

Inside the room was a young girl wearing the traditional red and white clothes of a priestess. She stood at the opposite wall, right across from him, and was hammering a stake into it.

_Clink. Clink. Clink._

His heartbeat quickened at the sight, and he hit the shutter button, this time closing his eyes first. The flash cut through his eyelids anyways, but he could still see when he opened them.

The girl paused, looked around at him, and then vanished.

Bakura's hands shook as he lowered the camera. A current of real thought had started to cut its way through his dream-fogged consciousness, and he wondered, _What's going on? Why am I here?_

He heard a noise like a sob from around the corner to his right, and he remembered the woman he had glimpsed earlier. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she could help him.

Bakura went around that corner and found that the wall opposite the room was latticed. He could that other hallway beyond it, and a room made of partitions and screens. The woman sat just outside the room, huddled into a corner with her face in her hands. Bakura frowned; he knew he had seen her walk by the room he had passed through, so how had she gotten over there?

"Excuse me…" he began, putting a hand against the lattice.

The woman jumped and looked up at him in stark terror. "No," she croaked, staggering to her feet. "No, get away!" She ran.

"No, wait, I'm…" Bakura called after her, but she had turned a corner and disappeared. "…not going to hurt you," he finished in a mumble. He completed the circuit back to the short hall near the door, and he looked through the window there, wondering if he could see where the woman had run to.

He saw only the hall stretching into darkness, and in the middle a different woman. She wore only a blue hakama, and her bare chest and arms where covered in dark blue marks like tattoos. She was looking at him with such malice that he whirled and ran for the door, sure that she was following and desperate to get away.

But chill of her presence drew no nearer; only her voice followed him as he yanked the door open. Words filled with rage.

"_No one will survive. No one…"_

Bakura slammed the door closed. The store room was blissfully quiet and empty, and he sank to the floor in this cold, imperfect sanctuary, trying to slow his racing heart. _I have to get out of here_, he realized. Hauling himself up, he clattered down the stairs three at a time and turned for the door to the entrance hall.

"Have you seen him?"

He shrieked and whirled, but the room was empty. No one was behind him. He sent his flashlight's beam into every corner, even into the high rafters above, but there was no sign of whoever had spoken. Bakura shuddered and reached to open the door, only to freeze as a small voice asked, "Where did he go?"

Slowly, he dropped his gaze.

The little girl in the kimono stood between him and the door. Bakura shrieked again, backed up, stumbled and fell over the steps to the hearth. The woman joined the little girl, and both advanced on him, reaching out with their pale hands. Now he could see that they were marked too, dark blue patterns that climbed up their necks and swirled over their faces.

"Have you seen him?" the woman said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I-I don't know what you're talking about," Bakura said, easing back further.

The woman charged at him, hands grasping and eyes wild. Bakura pulled the camera up and snapped her picture without even bothering to aim.

She gasped and backpedaled, and he took the opportunity to get back on his feet. Now he did aim with the camera, and though his hands were shaking, he could clearly see the woman glowering at him as she prepared to rush again. The little girl was there as well, keeping tight to the woman's side.

They hadn't disappeared this time. Bakura wondered if something had gone wrong; the other times these souls had appeared, he only had to take their pictures once for them to disappear. Yet, the woman had clearly been hurt. Maybe he just had to keep trying.

"My husband," the woman said. "Where did he go?" She drifted closer, and closer, and then she reached for him again.

Bakura was ready this time. He kept her face smack in the center of the viewfinder, and when he hit the shutter button, the woman did more than jump back. She fell to her knees. The girl beside her cried out, and together they faded away.

Bakura stayed frozen in place, camera trained on the spot where the pair had been. After a long minute, he dared to lower it, but he kept it close to his chest, ready to use at any moment. He glanced around the big room, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. The woman and the girl were gone.

With a relieved sigh, Bakura headed for the door. This time nothing appeared to block his way out, and he stepped into the hall, ready to get out before anything else showed up.

That plan was dashed as soon as he heard a voice. It was low, constant, a steady flow of words that he couldn't make out. Bakura edged forward and peered around the corner with his camera at the ready. Farther along, where the corridor turned to go the entrance, he could see a pair of feet. Someone was sitting back there against the wall. That woman again?

Of her he had no fear. This woman was alive. Bakura walked down the hall and rounded the corner to see her huddled against a dresser, facing away from the entrance. It was indeed her voice; she was talking to herself so fast that the words almost tumbled over each other as they left her mouth.

"…died too, if only I had died too, it's not my fault I'm the only one who survived, I should have been taken, I didn't survive because I wanted to, I had no choice! I had no choice, if I had died too…"

Bakura walked up and knelt down beside her, but she took no notice of him. "Hey…" he started.

"If only I had died with everyone else, yes, yes! If only I had died with everyone else, then I…"

"Why would you say such a thing?" he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.

The woman screamed and slapped it away. She lurched away and sat against the opposite wall, facing the corridor he had just come down. "Um…" he said, trying to think of something that would calm her down and get her to talk to him.

The woman stiffened suddenly, eyes and mouth open wide in an expression of sheer terror. Bakura blinked, wondering why she would be so afraid of him until he realized that she wasn't looking at him at all. She was staring past him, down the hall to the hearth room. He clutched the camera and turned slowly to see what frightened her so badly.

It was the tattoo-covered woman from the second floor. She watched them both from under her curtain of black hair, and for one eternal second no one moved. The she took a step forward.

The woman shrieked and ran, and Bakura wished dearly that he could do the same. His legs were cemented in place; they wouldn't obey his brain's commands. His hands were shaking so much that he knew he would never be able to snap a clear picture even if he could bring it up to his face.

The tattooed woman drew closer. He could see the pattern now: snakes mostly, intricately entwined with a plant that looked like holly. The tattoo was even in her eyes. She reached out with one hand, stepping forward until the tips of her fingers brushed his chest, just above his heart.

The touch was agony. Colder than ice, a lance of pain that went straight through to his back. His vision clouded over, colors faded, and in that instant he thought he saw something else. Some_where_ else. A room full of tattooed women, all of them staked to the walls and floor. Someone beside him, someone dear…someone gone. Someone standing over him, arm raised above their head, bringing it down as if to hammer at something.

_Please…let me sleep…_

The moment was gone, and at last Bakura was able to move. He broke and ran.

Behind him was the tattooed woman, still reaching, still grasping as she followed him. "No one will survive," he heard her hiss. It spurred him on, even though he seemed to be moving in slow motion. His legs felt like lead, dragging more with every step. The door, the entrance to this hideous manor, was no more than ten yards away. If he could reach it, he would escape. He would be safe.

He felt like he would never reach it.

He put out his hand, grasping for the door the same way that the tattooed woman had grasped for him. Was still grasping for him, just behind him. So close. He pulled one leg in front of the other. Only a step away, and then he could touch the door. He collided with it, and with a shove he burst through to a fleeting vision of falling snow, and then he woke up.

* * *

Yugi was crouched beside him, one hand hovering over his shoulder as if he wanted to wake Bakura but couldn't decide if it was a good idea to try. Bakura stared at him, and then he sat up so suddenly that he nearly bumped heads with the shorter boy. Yugi tumbled out of the way.

"Are you all right, Bakura-kun?" he asked. "You looked like you were having a bad dream."

"Dream?" Bakura murmured. He rubbed the spot over his heart where the woman had touched him, it still hurt. It wasn't the fading echo of phantom pain either; it was a sharp, icy cold pang. As if her fingers were still there, or as if someone had driven an icicle into him. "Was that all just a dream? It seemed so real."

Now he looked around. Jounouchi and Honda were still fast asleep in their bags, though Yugi was almost sitting on top of Honda. The faint light that came through the tent walls indicated that morning had arrived, but there was also the faint patter of rain. It was warm, and it smelled like wet earth and Jounouchi's feet. All the darkness and chill and moldy odor of the half-ruined manor was gone. Even the pain was fading away.

Yugi was still watching him with a concerned expression. "Was it…about the time you were…"

"Possessed?" Bakura finished for him. It was a touchy subject. No one wanted to remind him of those awful years, and so everyone tip-toed around the conversation when it was brought up. Only Jounouchi was direct about it, but it was well-known that he didn't have an ounce of tact. As such, it was often up to Bakura to prod the conversation forward, though he was as reluctant as the other. "No," he continued, and Yugi's face melted into relief.

"You want to talk about it?"

_Not really,_ Bakura thought, but he quickly reconsidered. He had never had the opportunity to talk to anyone about his dreams before. He wondered if it helped. "I was back in that house," he said, drawing his knees up to his chest. "Only it was different. It wasn't quite so derelict. And it was cold. Snowing."

Yugi frowned and scooted closer so he could sit comfortably. "Geez, Bakura-kun, I know the house was creepy, but I didn't think it would give anyone nightmares."

Bakura didn't have any reply to that, so he continued, "It was haunted in my dream. I saw a woman with a little girl. They attacked me. But I also found the camera, and I was able to make them go away with it. There was another woman there, one who I think was alive, but she was terrified, and she ran away every time I tried to reach her. And there was one other woman…"

He stopped there and shivered. Could that really have been just a dream? He could remember her so clearly. All that pain…that rage. It was so familiar somehow. "That woman felt like the spirit of my Ring," he finally concluded in a whisper.

Silence stretched between them, and the sound of the rain against the tent intensified. "I'm sorry," Yugi said after a minute.

Bakura shook his head. "It was just a dream," he said. "Probably brought on by the mansion, and what we talked about inside it." He thought briefly about telling Yugi what he had seen while they were all inside the house, and then decided against it. No need to make his closest friend think he was losing his mind. Instead, he changed the subject. "I thought it wasn't supposed to start raining until tomorrow."

"Yeah, but since when has a weather reporter been right?" Yugi replied. He seemed happy to take the cue and leave the matter of the dream behind. "We should probably wake everyone else up and get the camp packed up as soon as possible. I doubt the rain is going to let up, so we should find Jii-chan before any of us catch a cold from hiking in it."

"I agree. Let's get going as quick as we can. I want to be home already."


	3. Vanishing

In case you're wondering, I decided to skip the second night from the game and put a brief summary of it in the beginning. This is mainly because it was boring me to death to write it, so I figured it would bore you to death to read it, and that's generally not the aim when writing. Anyways, a big thank you to MarzBunni and SisuSaysHi (and I say hi back) for reviewing, and is there any way I can beg more of you to leave reviews? This is my first attempt at a horror story, and it would be nice to know how I'm doing. I also tend to update faster when I get lots of reviews. It's inspiring. That being said, I hope you at least enjoy the chapter.

_**Hour II: Vanishing**_

_Amane, I had that dream again last night. The same one that I had during the camping trip, only it was a little different. I followed the living woman deeper into the manor, to a large room with an old-fashioned partition around the bed. It's the same room I could see from that second-floor hallway. I didn't run into the ghosts from the night before, but around the woman I thought I could see shadows. Four shadows with the barest hints of faces, surrounding her and bending over her like they were angry at her for something. They disappeared when I got closer, but she didn't look up, even when I called to her. She was crying and mumbling, like the first time I saw her. At her feet I found something that looked like a passport, but it was half-burnt, so I can't be too sure. It had her name in it, though. Yoshi-something Takigawa. Probably Yoshino, but like I said, it was burnt, so I can't be sure. When I turned to leave, she said something like, "Please, wake me up. I didn't do anything wrong."_

_There were others there, too. The woman in the kimono from the night before. And some men in white clothes, too. Most of them ran from me in terror, but I found one in a corner in the stairs hallway. He stood in place and stared straight ahead until I captured him with the camera. Then he disappeared, but the corner he was in looked like it was covered with blood. I could only see the blood through the camera, though. The walls and floor looked normal otherwise. In the wall across from that corner was a small door. It was locked, and I could hear a terrible moaning beyond it. Like someone was in pain._

_I didn't see you there this time, Amane, but I still had the feeling that you were. I keep thinking that if I go further inside, I'll find you. It would be so nice to see you again. But I also keep thinking about that woman with the tattoos. She scares me, Amane. I hope you haven't seen her. When I awoke this morning, the place where she touched me hurt again. It was a cold, stabbing pain, and when I pulled my shirt down to see the spot, there was a bruise there. I wonder if that is purely psychological, or if there is more to this dream than overactive imagination. Am I cursed? Are you really in that house? Is Yoshino Takigawa a real person?_

_I know I would seem crazy to most people, but you know how crazy my whole life has been. I have to find out more: about this house, the dream, Yoshino, everything._

Bakura sat at the desk a little while longer, but he could think of no more to write, so he put his pen down and closed his journal. He always wrote in it like he was writing to his little sister; somehow it helped him organize his thoughts and make decisions better.

He had returned to his small apartment from the camping trip late last night. Yugi's grandfather had arrived late to pick up the soaked, bedraggled group, and he had insisted on them staying at the game shop until they had dried out and eaten some pizza. As a result, Bakura had only had time to record the events of the trip in his journal before falling into bed. He hadn't given much thought to the dream, and only wrote a few details about it.

Now, however, he was worried. He had never had recurring dreams before, and this one not only recurred, but apparently was affecting his body as well. He unbuttoned his shirt halfway and pulled it open to see the bruised place again, but it was gone along with the pain. He could only see a couple of the dark scars left by his Millennium Ring.

Bakura shook his head and re-buttoned his shirt. "Maybe it really is all psychological," he mumbled, and then he got up to start on his chores for the day.

It was still raining, so he decided to postpone sweeping off the balcony. The rain would have only turned any dirt into mud. He had been away for the past four days, so there were no dishes to clean, and only a little dust had gathered around the apartment in the days he had been gone. After a quick survey he saw that he really had nothing to do aside from sorting through the mail that had piled up during the trip. Bakura decided that he would do that and then go downtown to the card shop and see if he could improve his deck. Yugi had given up Duel Monsters after his duel against Atem, but Bakura still entered the tournaments, and he tended to do very well.

As he suspected, his mailbox was stuffed mostly with newspapers and junk mail. He doubted there would be anything worthwhile amid the mess, but he took it all back up to his sixth-floor apartment just in case. The newspapers he set aside to skim through later; first he sorted through the junk mail. There was one bill mixed up in the jumble, and he left it on the table while throwing the rest in the garbage. Then he sat down to look through the newspapers. Keeping up with current news was a habit he was still developing, and he usually just looked through the front page stories before losing interest. With four days of news to catch up on, he anticipated getting bored with it more quickly than usual.

So he was surprised to pick up today's paper to find a headline that interested him very much.

_Plane crash survivor's condition deteriorating one week after rescue._

Underneath the headline was a picture of the woman from his dream. Bakura stared at it. _Can this be real?_ he thought. Quickly, he scanned the blurb and then opened the paper to the main story and read it through. "Yoshino Takigawa," he murmured.

The sole survivor of a plane crash…thrown out of the aircraft into an arbor…surrounded by the bodies of her family and fiancé for four days before rescuers found her…suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome…afraid to sleep at first…complained of pain or bruises upon waking, though no bruises could be seen…

According to the article, she now spent most of her time asleep.

Bakura read it twice. "I get it now," he muttered. The woman had been found a week ago. He had to have read about it then. Her name and face must have stuck in his mind, and the horror of her story mixed with the creepiness of the manor in his subconscious to bring him these dreams.

That didn't explain the appearance of bruises on both of them.

Bakura took a few minutes to think about it, and then he stood up and went to grab his raincoat. Maybe this situation should have seemed impossible, but he was loathe to apply that word to anything after spending most of his childhood tormented by an ancient spirit. The article said Yoshino was in Katsuragi Hospital, which was only a few blocks from the Kame Game Shop. He could visit her after picking up some new cards. Maybe he could find out more about her. If she was awake.

"_Please, wake me up."_

He shivered as he remembered her plea from the dream. She had sounded so desperate. _Well, maybe a visit will help her. If we really are having the same dream, that is. Chances are I'm just going crazy._

On that pleasant note, he put on his coat and left.

* * *

Yugi was manning the counter at his grandfather's shop. Even though he no longer entered the official tournaments, he kept a deck and updated it often. Bakura made it a point to duel him every once in a while. It was a good lesson in humility.

There were a few other customers in the shop, but Yugi zeroed in on Bakura as soon as he walked through the door. "I bet you're after the new expansion pack," he called cheerfully. "It doesn't look like it has any cards you'd like, though."

"I still have to keep up with what the competition is using," Bakura replied. It was light-hearted banter that they went through every time he visited; Yugi knew well that any good duelist would look through any new cards that were published, whether they fit his deck or not. He also knew well what kind of cards Bakura favored, and often had good suggestions for improving his deck. Bakura valued his advice, and his friendship, above all else. "Your grandfather have any new rare cards?" he asked.

"Of course he does." They walked to the glass case that held Sugoroku Mutou's rare card collection, Yugi studying him as they did. "You look tired," he commented. "Did you sleep well last night?"

Bakura tensed, and he gave what he hoped was a convincing smile to the younger man. "Of course. It was nice to be back home and not have to listen to Jounouchi's snoring."

Yugi laughed at that, and then he started pointing out the new cards in the game shop's collection. Bakura was relieved that he had bought it; he was a terrible liar, but he didn't want Yugi worrying about him. He had put him through too much already.

He left the shop fifteen minutes later with a few new packs of cards. Maybe one of them would fit in his deck, but he didn't bother to look at them. Not just yet. He only pushed them into an interior pocket and hastened through the rain to the hospital.

The nurse at the front desk was more than happy to give him the directions to the ward where Yoshino Takigawa lay sleeping. Due to overcrowding problems, she hadn't been given her own room, but instead had a section curtained off for her at the end of the post-op ward. Everyone here was sleeping, most because they had just come out of surgery. Some had visitors or nurses by their bedsides, and others simply had their curtains pulled shut. Yoshino was one of the latter.

Bakura hesitated as he brushed through the curtain, but the woman slept just as the paper and the nurses had said. He noted that at least she was by a wall with a window, though little light came through the clouds and rain. There was a chair, but he didn't feel comfortable enough to sit down. He stood beside the bed instead, looking down at a face that was all too familiar.

Yoshino was thinner than she looked in the dreams. Frailer. Her skin had a translucent quality to it that made the bones of her skull almost visible. Her breath came in short gasps, and her eyes moved under their lids as if she was dreaming at that very minute. Bakura felt uneasy at her appearance.

"_Please, wake me up."_

Well, he didn't know if it was possible, but he had to try. He laid his hand on top of hers, wincing at the iciness of her fingers, and cleared his throat. "Um…Takigawa-san…"

No response. What had he been expecting? Bakura moved his hand up to shake her shoulder gently and tried again. "Yoshino-san, it's me. I've…seen you. In my dreams. If this thing is really happening, then you must have seen me, too. Please, you've got to wake up. You've got to come out of it…before…"

Before what? What would happen if she didn't wake up? Bakura shook her harder.

"Yoshino-san! Please—"

Her eyes flew open, and he jerked back with a startled yelp. But she didn't look at him, or make any other movement. She stared at the ceiling with a blank expression, and Bakura watched in horror as dark blue lines of bruises snaked up her neck and curled over her face.

_Not bruises,_ he realized. _Tattoos. Like the woman in the manor has._ And just like the woman in the manor, the tattoos even entered Yoshino's eyes.

Bakura tore his gaze away and started to run. He felt chilled, full of dread, like something very strong and very angry had entered the tiny section. If he stayed there, it might focus on him next.

"_I don't want to see anymore."_

He halted at the curtain, rooted in place by the words. They didn't sound as if they had come from Yoshino. The voice was different, deeper, and somehow it seemed more like he heard it with his mind instead of his ears.

"Yoshino…san?" he whispered, turning around slowly.

There was no response. She wasn't in the bed anymore. He looked around, but the space was too small, and the window was locked. There was nowhere she could have gone. The sheets of her bed were rumpled, and on her pillow was a black stain. Bakura swallowed, torn between running away and taking a closer look. Despite his better judgment, he let his curiosity get the better of him, and he stepped back around to the side of the bed. The stain was about the size of Yoshino's head, he saw.

With trembling fingers, he reached out and pulled the covers back.

_Ashes._ Bakura gasped and stumbled back, holding one hand over his mouth as he fought the urge to throw up. The black stain was ashes, a thin, human-shaped layer of ashes between the sheets. It was all that was left of Yoshino Takigawa.

* * *

It was nearly nightfall by the time he returned home. The hospital officials had called the police to report the woman's 'disappearance,' but they had stonewalled any efforts at an outside investigation. Bakura had talked to the head of the private security guard company, who had been more than willing to let him off easy. Apparently this wasn't the first time a patient had disappeared like this at Katsuragi Hospital. Bakura heard whispered references to other 'lost patients' from the staff.

He still felt spooked as he walked through the door. No lights were on, and the darkness in the apartment had a menacing feel to it.

"Get a grip, Ryou," he muttered to himself, flicking the living room light's switch. The extra illumination didn't help much; the shadows only retreated to the corners and under furniture, ready to spring out again at any second.

Bakura shook his head hard in an effort to get that train of thought out of his mind. _Zorc is gone. Shadows are nothing more than shadows now. They're not going to hurt you,_ he told himself. He shrugged out of his coat, hung it in the hall closet, and headed for the kitchen. Maybe dinner would calm him down. Dinner, and after that he could try watching a movie. Write a little more in his journal, and then get some sleep.

He shuddered. Bakura already dreaded the thought of going to sleep.

* * *

_Cold._

_Snow._

_The manor looming before him._

_The steady clink of stakes being hammered somewhere inside._

_He could see them in brief flashes: a hammer hitting a stake, a woman laying on her side, an older woman standing over her, a stake piercing flesh, a large stone vault with doors cracked open._

Bakura wrenched his eyes open. He was dreaming again, but the dream-shroud that normally encased his consciousness had lifted ever so slightly. He was aware that he was dreaming, that he was in this manor again for the third night in a row, and that the only other living person he had seen in here was now—inexplicably—gone. She had vanished from her hospital bed.

_Did she vanish from in here, too?_ he wondered.

He was in the entrance hall again, with the doors leading outside at his back. Somehow he understood that he could leave this place if he went through them. He could escape the manor and wake up. But he also thought that as soon as he went back to sleep, he would come back here. There was no escape, not really. Unless it was further inside. He certainly couldn't just stay here. Here is where the tattooed woman chased him, and touched him. His chest ached at the memory.

Bakura gripped his flashlight and the Camera Obscura and started forward. He might as well try to find Yoshino. Her disappearance had to be connected to the manor; why else would that tattoo appear on her before she vanished? The last place he saw her was that room with the blind-screen on the second floor. He would check it first.

He ignored the hall that branched to the right and instead went left, which led a large room partitioned into sections. The floor was covered in tatami mats, and a few paper lanterns in the corners cast a poor, flickering light. He had to walk to the other end of the room to find a door in the partitions to the other side. The he walked back to get to the door to the stairs hallway.

He had wandered into this part of the manor last night, chasing Yoshino. The stairs hallway was a long second floor room with two staircases leading to two different, smaller rooms on the first floor, and between them was a single staircase leading to a third floor storeroom. There was also a door near the first staircase that led to a hall that wrapped halfway around the room with the blind-screen. That was where he had followed Yoshino to the previous night, and he thought that if she was still here, it was where he would find her.

He hoped he wouldn't. He hoped that somehow she had escaped the manor, escaped the curse, even if it meant she was dead. At least she wouldn't be so hurt and terrified anymore. Bakura hurried up the stairs with that hope in mind.

He stopped dead when he got to the top. Before him, heading to the blind-screen room, were three man-shaped shadows. All were hunched over, all walked slowly, none paid him any mind at all. He stood and watched them, shivers coursing down his spine, until they passed from view. Then he readied his camera and followed them.

At first the blind-screen room seemed empty. In the left corner was the futon bed with the human-shaped lump, surrounded by the blind-screens. In the right corner was a closet, its door barely open. Something white reflected light out at him from inside, and he cautiously walked over and pulled the door open further.

His flashlight's beam played over an old-fashioned Japanese doll, and he breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment he had thought Yoshino was crammed in there, perhaps trying to hide from those shadows. Maybe she really had escaped.

He backed up, and the edge of his flashlight's beam played over a hunched figure against the wall. He centered the light on it, and his heart jumped into his throat.

It was Yoshino. She crouched, shaking, hands covering her head like she was warding off something. "No, no, no," she whispered over and over. Her hands were covered in blue snake-like patterns.

Bakura stepped back, terrified. How had she gotten there? She hadn't been in the room when he entered, and he hadn't heard her coming in behind him. Then a wave of cold washed over him, and he turned around.

Four shadows surrounded them. Tall, human-shaped, with the barest hints of upper faces. They seemed to glare at him and Yoshino, as if berating him for something. Behind him, Yoshino began to sob. "I didn't mean to survive," she choked out. "I didn't want to survive!"

The shadows moved closer, and Bakura lunged out of their circle. He turned quickly, raising the camera, and saw that they were focused on Yoshino. That didn't continue, however; slowly they turned and looked at him.

Bakura hit the shutter button.

Two of the shadows, caught in the middle of the frame, vanished, but the others began to walk as if circling him. Bakura aimed at them, but his hands were shaking, and the next frame didn't capture either of them. Furthermore, the two that had vanished reappeared near Yoshino almost instantly. Bakura gritted his teeth and willed his hands to stay steady. His next frame caught one, sending it stumbling into thin air, but he was too slow. Another one lowered its head and rushed at him, and he only had time to throw his arms up.

The shadow passed right through him, and the sensation was horrible. It was a cold that was more mental and emotional than physical, numbing his mind and freezing his thought processes. He turned slowly, wondering what had just happened, and a second shadow ran through him.

His flashlight dropped from nerveless fingers, and his vision started to cloud over. Somehow he managed to keep a grip on the camera, and only reflex made him push the shutter button. Luck had it pointed toward the next shadow lined up to attack.

It stumbled back and disappeared, and Bakura pointed at the one beside it. It vanished too, and then they both reformed near Yoshino. He paid them little heed, for the other two were charging at him again. Slowly, he aimed at one and pressed the button, but the other grazed him, sending another jolt of cold down his right side. He shuttered it next, and then turned to keep track of the newest two.

They were just beginning their circling maneuver. Bakura caught both of them in one frame and shuttered them away. Then he focused on Yoshino. The numbness was fading from his mind now, and he was able to process enough to realize that when the shadows reformed, they were always near her.

But no more reappeared. Only Yoshino was there, crying and crouching. Bakura started for her, but then he remembered how she had disappeared that day, leaving only ashes in her bed. He halted as a sick feeling of realization dawned on him. _This woman…she's not alive anymore._

Yoshino seemed to realize then that the shadows had gone. She lifted her head and looked around, and then she pulled herself up to a standing position. She looked around again, spotted Bakura, and charged toward him with hands outstretched.

She was no more than two feet away from him when Bakura managed to get his camera up and press the shutter button. Her face centered perfectly in the viewfinder, eyes wild and mouth open and blue tattoos everywhere. It was an image that he only caught the briefest glimpse of, but it was one that he knew would stay in his mind for a long time.

She stumbled back from the power of the camera, and Bakura shuttered her again. "No!" she screeched at him, and again he pressed the shutter button. This time, she sank to her knees. "You're…not like me?" she asked. Her voice sounded strange. It was confused and despairing at the same time. "You're not like…me?"

She fell forward and sank into the floor.

Bakura stood in place until she vanished, and then he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He still felt dizzy and disoriented from the shadows' attacks, and he was confused at Yoshino's behavior as well. He knew there was some connection between it and her disappearance at the hospital, but his thoughts were still fuzzy, and his head hurt when he tried to work it out. So he lowered his camera, picked up his flashlight, and turned to leave.

Yoshino was standing in the hall just outside.

Bakura shrieked and tried to run back into the room, but she grabbed his arm.

"_You're not like me?"_

* * *

He woke up and sat straight up in bed. The dizziness and the fuzziness in his mind increased, and cold sweat covered his face and neck. He could almost still feel it—Yoshino's cold hand on his arm. She was here, in his room, he knew it. If he turned, he would see her sitting beside his bed, gripping his arm.

He jerked his head around. Nothing was there.

Then pain stabbed into his chest, starting above his heart and then spreading. He grabbed at the spot and pulled his sleeveless nightshirt down enough to see it. The blue bruise was there again. It spread with the pain, intricate lines weaving across his chest to his shoulders, and making their way down his arms halfway to the elbows. It hadn't spread nearly so far the previous morning.

Outside, rain continued to beat a gentle staccato against the window.


	4. The Manor of Sleep

_**Hour III: The Manor of Sleep**_

Bakura went to the library that day.

At first he hadn't wanted to go out at all. The lack of decent sleep made him tired, and he didn't want to have any more incidents like the one at the hospital. However, the monotony of cleaning up his small apartment allowed his brain to run wild with things that he would rather not think about, and he had too many questions that needed answering.

Yoshino Takigawa was a real person. He had seen her in that dream before he ever read that newspaper article. Or at least, he thought he hadn't. Maybe he was just going crazy.

Crazy didn't explain her disappearance. Or the pile of ashes left behind in her bed.

Bakura's hand clenched inside his rain coat. Yoshino had been caught in that dream, and she had turned into ash. Was the same thing going to happen to him?

_This is impossible,_ he told himself, shaking his head. _People don't just turn into ash. It's all just a bad dream._

_People don't spend their childhoods possessed by demons, either._

Try as he might, he couldn't deny the possibility that it was more than a dream.

There had been other people there, too. That woman and the little girl. Mother and daughter, maybe? Bakura thought back on his brief encounters with them. They seemed to have been searching for someone. Who? And why were they in that manor?

And then there was the woman with the blue tattoos. Bakura shivered and tried not to think about her. He couldn't remember much anyway. Just the horrible fear, and the intense cold of her touch, and her voice.

_No one will survive…no one._

Survive what?

All these questions were going to drive him mad, if he wasn't already. He reached the front of the library and hesitated at the doors. What did he expect to find here? He doubted there were many books on dreams about abandoned manors and tattooed ghosts. The best he could do immediately was find out more about Yoshino. Maybe he could look up information on that mother and daughter, but how many hundreds of newspapers would he have to go through to find them? How many mothers and daughters had gone missing together over the years? How did he even know if they were real?

Why in the world was he coming here?

Amane had been there too. If he found out more about the manor, maybe he would find out more about her.

Bakura opened the doors and stepped in.

Two hours later, his frustrations returned. Finding out about Yoshino had been easy enough, since her story had happened recently. He had studied the original newspaper article about the plane crash for a few minutes, trying to decide if he had seen it before, but he just couldn't tell. It seemed vaguely familiar, but was that the result of reading it, or of seeing Yoshino in his dream?

So he put that away and moved on to pulling microfilms of successively older newspapers to look for missing persons reports. That task was far too large to handle at first due to the sheer number of newspapers the library archived, so he decided to concentrate on a couple of newspapers that featured news in the same province as the old manor.

The task still proved to be dull and monotonous. The papers were at least small, but the news they presented was the kind that dealt with the success of recent harvests or the blunders of local politicians. After a while he realized that he had gone through three whole issues without even seeing a word of them. Bakura sighed and began reading his current issue all over again. _Amane is depending on me,_ he told himself. That gave him enough conviction to sort through the headlines.

Four issues later, he was glad he did.

_Series of Vanishings across Region_

The headline caught Bakura's eye, and he skimmed through the article. Then he went back and read it more thoroughly.

The article's focus was about a mother and daughter who had gone missing from a nearby village. They often went out looking for the woman's husband, who had vanished the previous year. Then the day before the newspaper was published, a friend went to visit them and found only black, soot-like marks on their beds. Other similar disappearances had happened, and people whispered that the vanished ones had been spirited away.

Their names were Makie and Kozue Kuzuhara. They had gone missing in 1904.

Bakura really had no idea if those missing people were the same ones he had encountered in his dream, but it was a strong coincidence nonetheless. More tenuous evidence that he wasn't crazy. He shut off the microfilm and ran his hands through his hair.

He wasn't looking forward to going to sleep that night.

* * *

_Snow._

_The clanging of hammer against stake._

_Someone in white slashing at him._

_A figure standing in a blood-soaked corner._

_A hand protruding from a wall._

Bakura opened his eyes. He was in the same room that he had been in the previous night, the one where Yoshino had attacked him. It was empty now, but for a key that lay where the woman had crouched earlier. He walked over and picked it up.

The key had a design on it that looked like a rough square. Bakura frowned at it, sure that he had seen it somewhere before. Then he looked back toward the hall and grimaced. If he left, he would surely be attacked by more ghosts.

_If I leave, I might find Amane again._

That thought was enough to drive him out into the hall and over to the door the led to the stairs hallway. Before he could open it, someone spoke behind him.

It was a woman's voice, a low voice, and he couldn't make out what it was saying. The woman sounded distinctly unhappy, though. Bakura whirled around and shined his flashlight through a crack in the rice paper wall.

No one was visible, and the voice fell silent.

After waiting another minute, he turned and opened the door into the stairs hallway. He remembered now where he had seen the marking on the key before. It was also on the small door under the stairwell, where he had heard a pained moan two nights ago. The thought of opening that door and finding the source of that moan made him shiver, but there was no other way to get deeper into the mansion. It was certainly better than staying here where random voices muttered at him.

The stairs hallway was dark and silent at the moment, but the hair on the back of his neck prickled. Something was there, even if he couldn't see it. He ventured past the first stairwell, moving slow and keeping close to the wall while casting several glances behind him. He would rather not fight with Yoshino's ghost again, but he would be ready if he had to.

But when the ghost revealed itself, it was not Yoshino Takigawa or the old woman whose voice he had heard. It was a man in white clothes and a tall hat. He took no notice of Bakura, but walked slowly down the stairs at the far end of the hall. It spoke to itself, but its muttered words floated back to the frightened boy's ears.

"_More sacrifices. More blood."_

Bakura clutched his camera and stood frozen against the wall until the ghost faded. Then he stayed there several more minutes. That was the stairwell that led down to the door he needed. Did he really want to follow a man who wanted sacrifices and blood?

_I have the Camera Obscura. And Amane might be behind that door._

He dredged up some courage from somewhere within himself, walked down the hall, and took the stairs down into the small, first-floor storage room. A shelf against the closest wall held an assortment of boxes, but Bakura had no interest in them. He had already searched through them and found nothing useful. His goal now was the small door tucked into the alcove under the stairs. Nervously, he crouched beside the half-sized door and listened.

He thought he could hear the pained moan from before, but it was much lower, muffled, and he couldn't tell if he really heard anything or if his overtaxed mind was playing tricks on him. Either way, this was the only way to go. Bakura unlocked the door and stepped through it.

The corridor he was in turned to the left only a few feet ahead. The moaning he had heard sounded from somewhere beyond it.

Bakura cursed under his breath. _No going back now,_ he told himself, and steeling himself against what he might find, he walked around the corner.

The hall ended in another hall. The path was dimly lit by candles set on the floor by the walls, and the walls themselves bore strange, human-shaped soot stains. Bakura stopped dead when he saw those; the stains combined with the moans made every instinct within him wake up and scream at him to _run!_

Once again, he found a well of courage somewhere inside and managed to put one foot in front of the other.

The corridor twisted around another room-within-a-room. Unlike the enclosed room upstairs, this one had a small door. Bakura couldn't get it open, but he didn't try very hard. The moans were coming from within that room, and he wasn't too eager to find their source. More disturbing, the wall right across from that door had cracked open, and something that could have been a tree root but looked a lot like a human hand poked through. Once he noticed it, Bakura very quickly made his way to the next bend in the hall.

He found two other doors leading out. One was yet another half-sized door (he wondered if all the people who had built the place were dwarves or children) that led down some steps to a crawl-space beneath the manor's floor. Bakura was too big to fit into the space even if he wanted to, so he backtracked. The other door led to an outdoor courtyard.

Snow fell gently from the black sky above. It drifted against the well to his right and piled on top of the cluster of tombstones ahead. They took up the majority of the narrow space, almost obscuring the double doors that led back into the manor at the far end. The house's walls loomed three stories high on all sides.

The light of Bakura's flashlight shook as his hand trembled. He knew this place. He had been here before, in that daydream…hallucination…whatever it was. He had seen Amane walk through those doors. _She's really here…_

Bakura ran across the courtyard and grabbed the doors to fling them open. They were locked tight.

He tried again. They still didn't open.

"What?" he asked, staring at the doors as if they had betrayed him.

If these were locked, then he couldn't go deeper into the mansion. He couldn't find Amane. Unless he could find a key somewhere, but he really didn't want to go back to looking in all those rooms where there was moaning and strange mumbling voices and Yoshino's spirit and the lost mother and child. And men in tall court hats who wanted sacrifices and blood. He just wanted to go forward and be done with this nightmare.

But the doors would not open.

Shoulders slumped, Bakura turned to face the courtyard. A man in white robes stood just behind him.

Before he could react, the spirit raised an arm and staggered at him. Bakura gasped, his vision swimming as the man ran straight through him. He was ice cold, and he felt as if a bit of his life had been leached away. Dimly, he heard the man in white groaning behind him, and he stumbled forward before the ghost could attack again. He was too slow; an icy brush across his back sent the courtyard spinning around him. Bakura whirled and hit the shutter on the camera several times, though he was too disoriented to do more than wave it in the ghost's general direction.

He heard a strangled noise and hoped that meant he had hurt it. Standing still, he fought down the dizziness until he could see the spirit standing near the tombstones. It was walking, circling him as it prepared for another attack. The motion didn't help Bakura's dizziness. Still, he managed to keep the camera trained on the ghost, and when it lunged for him again, he snapped the shutter dead-on.

The man in white stumbled back and fell to its knees. "_Secret…dies…me…"_ it choked out, and then it disappeared.

Bakura sat down and leaned his head on his hands. If another ghost appeared and attacked him now, he could be easy pickings, but he couldn't summon enough energy to do anything about it. _What if too many ghosts touch me?_ he wondered. _Will they kill me? Can I die in this dream? Will I just wake up and never come back? Or will I turn to ashes like Yoshino?_

He really didn't want to find out.

After a few minutes the chill in his bones faded, and he felt strong enough to get up and walk back across the courtyard. Those doors must have a key, and he wasn't going to find it by sitting here. Going through the rest of the manor looking for it was a horrible prospect, but Bakura thought of Amane, and that bolstered his spirit enough to open the door into the stained corridor.

Another man in white stood just inside. Bakura noticed then that this one, like the one who had attacked him, didn't wear a tall court hat. Neither were the same ghost that had wanted more sacrifices. This one even gave a loud cry at the sight of him, turning and running away. Bakura stood for a moment, blinking in surprise, and then he ran after it. Later he would look back and wonder at the sheer stupidity of chasing a ghost, but right then all he could think about was that it was the first time he had chased down a ghost instead of vice versa, and maybe, just maybe it would lead him to the key to the courtyard doors.

The ghost disappeared through the door to the stairs hallway. Bakura lost a little time squeezing through it, but the only way to go was up the stairs, so up he went. As he reached the second floor, he saw a flash of white running up the staircase that led to the third floor.

He hadn't been up those stairs before, so it was with some hesitation that he followed the ghost up to the third floor. At the top he found a tiny room filled with clutter. The ghost was nowhere to be found.

Bakura took a minute to poke through the shelves, open the drawers, lift a drape to find a broken mirror. When he was satisfied that everything there was broken or rotten from disuse, he went over to the door in the corner and tried it. It opened onto the roof outside. A strip of blue tiles ran around the edge, though walls still rose above him. Below was the grave courtyard. In the wall to the right was another door.

Bakura looked at the snow-slicked tile walkway and grimaced. Again he wondered what would happen if he fell to his death in this dream, and he hoped that whatever this spirit was leading him to was worth it. If it was leading him to anything. Bakura released his hold on the camera, put his hands on the wall to steady himself, and prayed that nothing would attack him as he inched out onto the roof.

The walk was every bit as treacherous as it looked. Bakura alternated between staring at the wall between his hands as he walked and glancing at the door to see how close he was. Turning the corner at the junction of the walls was especially tricky, and he slipped to a knee as he tried it. He froze and took several seconds to breathe before he dared to push himself back up and continue on. Many more times he slipped, and all the while he tried hard not to think about the courtyard three stories below. After five minutes that felt like hours, he reached the door and stumbled in.

Inside was a small room, empty but for a few boards that leaned against the walls and the white-robed ghost that attacked him. Bakura lunged to the side, but the ghost managed to clip him on the shoulder. His arm went numb, and he dropped his flashlight, though he managed to keep his hold on the camera. Turning, he snapped off a shot that sent the ghost flailing out the door. Then he steadied himself and watched the door, waiting for the ghost to come back through.

A movement in the corner of his eye was all the warning he had. Bakura turned and hit the camera shutter just in time as the spirit came through the wall to attack him with raised arms. Somehow he managed to shoot the ghost head-on, and it staggered back. Just for good measure, he hit the shutter one more time, and the ghost fell to its knees and vanished. In its place was something small that glinted in the faint beam of the flashlight.

Bakura picked up the flashlight with one hand and fumbled against the floor with the still-chilled fingers of the other until he managed to pick the object up. It was a key with a design of mandarins carved onto it.

_The key!_ Bakura turned and ran out the door, nearly slipping completely off the roof in his haste to get back down to the courtyard. If any more ghosts appeared, he didn't notice them at all. Not even the moaning in the stained corridor registered as he rushed through. His only thought was opening those doors and finding his sister on the other side.

The lock was cold and wet with snow, but it did have the same mandarin pattern as the key. Bakura dropped it twice in his rush to get the doors open, but on the third try he managed to unlock them. "Amane!" he called, flinging the doors wide and taking two steps in.

He was in an old-style entry room. A couple of rotting frames stood by the walls, and tattered cloth hung from the support beams overhead. In the back was a hall, and Amane walked slowly down it, her back to him.

"Amane!" he cried again, reaching for her. But if she heard him, she didn't turn, and his vision began to fade to gray. "No, not now!" he said, but he sank down as if passing out.

He sat straight up in bed. Murky light filtered through his curtains, signaling the dawn. It let him see his chest and arms as the stabbing pain started over his heart and spread, along with the bruise. The blue and purple pattern crawled from his chest to his shoulder and halfway down his arm, forming a snake and some sort of plant with prickly leaves. Then it faded as suddenly as it began.

Bakura waited another minute, and then he wiped the sweat from his face. _How much more of this can I take?_

Outside, the first few drops of rain began to fall.


	5. The Evil Dream

_It's amazing to see that people still read this story. My heartfelt thanks to those who reviewed. Sorry about the slow updates, but I'm only able to work on the story at all every other week. Work keeps me pretty busy. All standard disclaimers apply; please read and enjoy and leave a review if you like._

_**Hour IV: The Evil Dream**_

The best part of the day for Bakura was waking up. This had always been true, even before his nightmares became so real. Over the last few days, the pain of the spreading bruise had dampened his enthusiasm for a new morning, but he had still been grateful to escape the Manor of Sleep and the ghosts that roamed its halls.

However, he wasn't so relieved at being at being awake that he didn't notice the quiet crying sound that drifted through his room.

Bakura froze as he put his feet on the floor, panicked at the thought that a ghost had somehow followed him out of the dream and into the real world. Then he dismissed the idea as silly and decided that it was just some fading remnant of the dream, teasing his brain for as long as it could. It was merely imagination and would fade quickly.

He sat still and waited. The crying continued.

Bakura closed his eyes. "This cannot be happening," he whispered to himself. Yet the sound was there, as if mocking him. It wasn't going away. After a few minutes, Bakura drummed up the courage to stand and walk around his room. He had no idea what he would do if he found the source of the crying, but he surely couldn't ignore it all day. Ghosts didn't just leave if they were ignored; they demanded attention.

The sound was soft, but Bakura soon realized that it was coming from his closet. He suppressed the urge to snort at this stereotypical hiding place for ghosts. "All right," he said. "Time for you to go." He reached for the handle and then stopped abruptly.

This wasn't the dream. He didn't have the Camera Obscura.

He turned around and looked at his desk, where the old, broken camera sat. Even if he could make it work outside a dream, he had no film for it. He was defenseless here.

The crying grew louder, sounding for all the world like a lost little girl.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Bakura said, pulling the doors open. He was too tired mentally to deal with the suspense.

A little girl in a faded kimono sat on the middle shelf in his closet. She looked up, wiping at her cheeks with a hand, and then she jumped out at him.

Bakura gasped and took a step back as a rush of cold air washed over him. Nothing else happened, however, and soon the temperature in the room returned to normal. He looked back in the closet. It was empty. He looked over his shoulder, but nothing was there, either. The ghost girl had gone.

_Maybe they don't have the power to harm outside of the dream,_ he thought. _If only Zorc could have been so benign._

Benign. What a laughable word. It didn't apply to the ghosts of his dreams—real or not—any more than it had to Zorc. Bakura stifled a sigh and set about getting ready for the day. He had promised to meet Yugi for lunch, but afterwards he had nothing to do. Going to the library again was a good enough idea. Maybe he could look up some information on the men in white.

* * *

"Are you okay?" Yugi asked for the third time. "You don't look so well."

"I'm fine," Bakura told him. "I was fine two times before."

The smaller boy glanced down. "You're not eating."

Bakura realized then that he had been picking at his burger and fries, but had yet to take a bite. This was extremely abnormal for him; years of being possessed by a demon that cared not a whit if its host got any sustenance had put him in the habit of eating anytime he got the chance, and eating a lot. His tendency to order the largest meal possible and wolf it down in half the time it would take the others to eat had earned him much good-natured joking. Today, his plate was pathetically tiny and his food untouched. Anyone with half a brain would know that something was bothering him.

Yugi had more than half a brain and a very alarmed look on his face.

After a moment of awkward silence, Bakura pushed his plate away and gave in. "I haven't been sleeping well," he admitted. "I've been having dreams."

"You said they'd stopped after we defeated Zorc," Yugi said. His tone was worried, softening the accusatory feel of the words.

"These are different." His old nightmares were bad enough. Dreams of Zorc and the things it might be doing to people…to his friends…with his body. And other, more elusive dreams. The ones that truly had him waking up covered in cold sweat, shaking and clutching at the covers. Those were the ones that he could never quite remember. All he had ever gotten was a vague impression of heat and bright golden light before the dream faded with last vestiges of sleep. If that one ever combined with the manor that haunted him now…

He shuddered and shook the thought away. Yugi was still waiting on an explanation. Bakura gave his friend an accounting of his last few nights, leaving out the bit about discovering Yoshino's very real existence and his trip to the hospital. No need to alarm Yugi any more than he already was.

Yugi tapped the table thoughtfully. "Sounds like the Shadow Realm," he said.

Bakura blinked. He remembered thinking about being in a penalty game at the beginning, but beyond that he hadn't given the Shadow Realm a second thought. "Maybe," he said. "But Zorc and the Millennium Items are gone. How could I get pulled into the Shadow Realm in my sleep?"

"I dunno," Yugi said with a shrug. "Maybe there's something else magic that's doing it." He snapped his fingers as a thought came to him. "Like that camera! Doesn't it have something to do with ghosts?"

Bakura paused and thought about it, but he shook his head. "The camera is the only protection I have in the dreams," he said. "I don't see how it could cause a nightmare and at the same time do something to repel it."

"Well, it has to be something," Yugi replied. "What were you planning to do today?"

"Research at the library."

"Great." Yugi stood and signaled the waitress. "I can help. Maybe we'll find something if we work together."

* * *

They found nothing.

Bakura slipped back into his apartment at ten thirty. The library had closed half an hour ago, and his eyes still ached from all the reading he had done. Not knowing where else to start, they had delved into books about the paranormal, but although there were plenty of stories about manor filled with ghosts, there were none about a house that only haunted people when they were asleep. The only thing Yugi found that seemed interesting was a passing reference about an area in the mountains that had legends of people mysteriously disappearing over the past two hundred years. Bakura dismissed it until Yugi told him that it was the same area that they had hiked through. Then he had looked it over and seen that in some cases, a friend went to someone's house and found only black, soot-like stains.

_Like Yoshino._ Bakura shivered as he stamped the water from his shoes before taking them off. He still hadn't told Yugi about her, and he hoped that his friend hadn't noticed his reaction to that little bit of story. And to think that people had been vanishing like her for _two hundred years._

Was he going to be next?

Bakura went through his apartment and turned all the lights on, but that did little to dispel the cold shivers that raced down his spine. There was no helping it, however, and eventually he went to bed.

* * *

_Cold._

_The clanking of hammer on steel._

_An altar in a room._

_Walls covered with tiny paper dolls._

_Three girls gathered around a staked body._

_A long, empty hallway._

When awareness returned to normal, Bakura found himself lying on the floor of the old entrance hall, exactly where he had been before he had awakened the day before. Ahead, Amane walked down the hall in the back until she disappeared through the door at its end.

"Amane!" he called, standing up.

Silence answered him.

Bakura started forward, eyes on the door in the back. He barely noticed the cross hall as he passed it, and only had the sudden prickle of the hair on his arms to warn him as one of the men in white attacked him from the right.

He gasped and dodged under the wild swing, backing into the corridor on the left. This particular ghost had a knife, with a discoloration along its ghostly edge that looked too much like dried blood. The man watched him, and then began to circle around him.

_Oh, no you don't,_ Bakura thought, bringing up the camera and snapping a quick picture. The ghost staggered back before it could slip through the wall, and Bakura advanced a step, snapping another pictured.

After the third shot, the ghost knelt down and dissolved, making not a sound. Bakura breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention to his surroundings. The halls were more brightly lit than most of the manor, though he still wouldn't risk turning off his flashlight. Strings of bells stretched across the ceiling, and doors waited at all three ends. If any more ghosts were around, they didn't show themselves.

Bakura cursed himself for his bit of inattention and turned back to the door Amane had disappeared through. She was probably long gone into the deeper part of the mansion now. No matter. He would find her. He just had to keep himself from getting killed first.

Unfortunately, the door she had walked through wouldn't open. Bakura cursed under his breath, but he really had expected no different. The newer part of the house had been a horrible puzzle to get through, and this section was likely to be worse.

_Puzzles are Yugi's forte,_ he thought sourly. _If he were here—_

No. He would not wish this nightmare on anyone else. Not even his worst enemy. Most certainly not his best friend. Bakura turned around and took the corridor that led to the left.

There were three steps up that led to the door at the end. This one, thankfully, opened to his touch, revealing a room that was empty except for an ancient projector in the middle and a dirty white cloth tacked to the wall in front of it. Bakura frowned at the device, wondering what it was doing here, and then he walked around it.

Two of the walls had alcoves behind them. The first had nothing but film that crumbled to dust when he touched it, but the second was filled with books. Most of them looked just as old as the film and the projector, but he spotted one in the piles with a spine that was still mostly intact. Curious, he picked it up and thumbed it open.

_Folklore notes,_ read the first page in small, neat handwriting.

Bakura read through a few pages with interest. It seemed to have been written by a folklorist who had come to a house in the mountains while doing research. He talked of an old legend of a sleeping priestess and a shrine where people could "offer their pain." It was a place that was protected by an order of women who did not allow outsiders into their home and only allowed worshippers and men to "continue the bloodline" during the winter months. Bakura grew bored with the descriptions of people and villages, and he soon put the book back on the pile.

There was nothing else to see except a door in the wall close to the one he had come through. Hoping it would lead him into the area that Amane had disappeared to, Bakura took it.

Beyond was a wide hall that was separated lengthwise in two. Sturdy lattices lined the hall's middle and created tiny alcoves whose purpose he could only guess at. Halfway down, the roof had partially collapsed, and snow and freezing air filtered in through the hole. Bakura wrinkled his nose at it as he started forward, but a low moan soon took his attention away from the physical discomfort.

He looked around, but nothing waited in front of or behind him. Finally he looked over to the side of the hall beyond the lattice.

The spirit of a woman appeared to be looking back at him. Appeared to be, though she shouldn't have been able to see him at all. A bloody bandage was wrapped around her skull, stretched so tightly across her eye sockets that it was clear nothing was beneath it. Her hands, which at first glance seemed to be clutching a mess of twigs, were in fact impaled with dozens of thick needles.

Bakura raised the camera and somehow managed to take her picture. His hands were shaking so hard that he was surprised he got her framed in the first try.

The ghost faded, and he made his way down the hall, constantly looking back over his shoulder. He had thought he was getting used to the spirits that roamed through the manor, but the needle woman was a whole new level of creepy. _What were these people doing here to produce a ghost like that?_

He was convinced at last that this dream was something more than his nightmarish imagination. He was confident that he wasn't yet screwed up in the head enough to dream of something like _that_.

A door at the end of the hall led into another corridor. This one led to an open air courtyard, smaller than the one with the gravestones in it. A walkway surrounded a patch of ground that boasted a twisting, leafless tree. Around the tree were several tall, thin stakes with blood red paper dolls skewered on their ends.

Bakura tore his eyes away in an effort to find something else—anything else, to look at. In the wall to his right was a door. To his left was an elaborate set of double doors that had several ropes crossed in front of them and a piece of paper attached to their middle. It looked like a warding spell of some sort. The wall on the far side had another corridor that led back into the mansion. Bakura started down the walkway to get a better look.

Quite suddenly, a young girl wearing the red and white of a shrine priestess appeared. She had her back turned, and she didn't seem to notice him at all as she walked into that corridor and vanished. Bakura's heart twisted painfully. _Poor girl. She must be Amane age, or a little younger. How did she end up in this dreadful place?_

But he couldn't ask her. Not now. He looked around again, and the tree once more caught his attention. He walked down the two steps to the ground and stepped up to the tree for a closer look.

A wooden effigy in white clothing was bound to the trunk, tied in place by sacred ropes. Bakura reached out and touched it, but there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about it except its existence. Then he noticed the sound.

_Clink. Clink. Clink._

Like a hammer driving home a stake. Bakura jerked his hand away from the effigy, but the sound persisted. It was coming from somewhere to his right. Down the corridor where the young priestess had disappeared.

Bakura cursed under his breath. Very likely the unpleasant sound had something to do with the little girl. He hoped that she wasn't the one making it, though why he should feel anything at all for a ghost in this house of horrors was beyond him. Maybe it was her age. She had died so young, just like his sister. And she was here. Just like his sister.

Bakura closed his eyes. _Amane, give me the strength to find you and get you out of here._ He walked over to the corridor and started down it.

After a short, unremarkable walk, the hall turned to the right, revealing two doors. The one at the very end was more or less normal. The one to the right was another half-sized portal, and it was sealed with a warding doll. The clinking sound came from behind it.

Bakura sighed and held up his camera, taking the door's picture. In the flash, he saw something else, something familiar. The image this warding spell gave him was of another priestess girl, hammering a stake into a wall covered with writing. He knew where he had seen this before, and it was a long walk back. He hoped in vain that he wouldn't encounter any ghosts on the trek.

The larger door was either locked or held in place by something, so he backtracked to the tree courtyard. As soon as he stepped foot onto the walkway, his hopes of not meeting a ghost were dashed.

This was another man in white, but he was very different from the others. He wore a black, ceremonial court hat, and he held high a bloody meat cleaver that was at least half as big as Bakura's head. Before he could react, the weapon came swinging down.

Bakura gave as strangled cry as the ghost's momentum carried it through him. That _hurt._ Not with the numbing cold or the dizziness, though both of those were still present. This physically hurt like he had been sliced open. He turned around and snapped off a series of photos while he stumbled away. At least one must have worked, for he remained unassaulted long enough to cling to the railing while his vision cleared. Unfortunately, the first thing he saw as his senses returned was the spirit bearing down on him, nearly running with its cleaver held high again.

"_You cannot escape,_" it said, rearing back for another strike. Bakura snapped another shot, and the ghost fell back a step. Then he backed up and waited for it to come again. It did, and before it could get close enough to strike, Bakura snapped the camera shutter one, two, three times. The ghost fell back a bit with each shot, under finally it fell to its knees and began to dissolve. It looked back up at him, and Bakura noticed for the first time that its face was half-covered with a black cloth. _"More sacrifices,_" it demanded. _"More blood."_

Then it was gone.

Bakura shivered. He had heard that before, just the previous night. This was the first of the men in white he had seen. Given the size of its meat cleaver, its last words, and the fright of the other men, maybe this one had been the one to slaughter the others.

_And now it wants to slaughter me. Great._ That unhappy thought motivated him to leave the tree courtyard as quickly as possible.

He tried the door that was in the wall in front of the tree and found that it opened into a hall. The corridor turned to the right and led into a storage room with a set of stairs opposite him and a door to his left. After running over the room's contents (a set of drawers, a couple of baskets with dolls in them, a box with an eerie Noh mask on top), he checked the door. It was closed with a simple sliding lock that he was able to open, and to his delight he found that the door led to the bell hallway. It was the same one that Amane had disappeared through.

Back in the bell hall, he took the corridor to his left, hoping to find another shortcut through the door at its end. This led him into a large room partitioned into several sections. One section, to his left, had a loft above it, and stairs leading up to it. Another, just in front of it, held a small altar and some bedding. Behind this section was an alcove leading with a set of double doors.

Bakura stepped down into the short "hall" that led between the real wall and the rice paper partition of this section. Something prickled at his sense, but all he could see was a tiny door near the floor that wouldn't move no matter how much he pulled at it. He wondered if something was on the other side, trying not to be found, and then he quickly moved on. Maybe something was there that he didn't want to find.

The double doors had the same type of sliding lock as the door to the bell hallway, and he opened it easily to find himself back in the same great hearth room at the front of the house. Shortcut indeed. From there it was a short, uneventful walk up to the enclosed room on the second floor. As soon as he entered the hall that surrounded the room, he could hear the clinking sound again. He followed it around to the tiny window and peered in to find the same long-hair girl pounding a stake into that wall.

_Why does she keep doing that?_ he wondered as he snapped her picture. The girl stopped, turned around slowly to look at him, and then vanished.

_Is there something important about that room? About the stakes?_ He thought about it as he made his way back through the mansion to the warded door. _Was she ordered to do it by someone? Is she doing it because she thinks it will help something? Because she likes it? There must be something about those stakes. I hear them being hammered all the time in these dreams._

His musing was interrupted as he entered the partitioned room, and a clock somewhere near the loft began to toll loudly. Bakura jumped at the sound, and then jumped again as the spirit of a beautiful woman appeared in front of him, floating halfway between the floor and the high ceiling. The two of them stared at each other for three seconds, and then the woman swooped forward with arms outstretched.

She moved so quickly that Bakura barely had time to get his camera up. He felt the ghostly chill of her hands at his shoulders as he snapped the photo.

The woman bounced back, cringing as he shot her again and again until she was on the ground. Bakura paused, his heart beating faster. _That's strange. Shouldn't she have dissolved by now?_

With a cry, the woman hopped up and flew toward him in midair once again. "_I won't let you go!"_ she hissed. Bakura yelped and snapped the shutter twice more, backing up. The first shot stopped the woman cold, and with the second one, she finally sank to the ground. _"Akito…_" she cried in a pitiful voice, and then she vanished.

Bakura stood still for a moment until he could gather up the courage to look around. The rest of the room seemed empty, no spirits waiting in the loft or either of the small sections. That was enough for him; he fled into the bell hallway and from there to the tree courtyard, terrified that he would be attacked by another new ghost.

He made it back to the small door without further incident and found to his relief that the warding had faded. However, the clinking noise he had heard beyond it had faded. Whatever had been there was gone, and that was fine with him. Bakura opened the small door and ducked through.

He was in a room, bare except for a small table to his left and hundreds of red-clothed dolls staked to the walls. In front of him was the ghost of a shrine priestess, her shoulder-length hair held back on one side by a small red bow. She held a stake and a hammer, and she giggled a little when she saw him, but she made no move. Bakura snapped a picture of her, and she faded without a sound.

Unnerving, but not too bad. Bakura went over to the table to get a better look. On its middle stood a small altar, and to its sides were wheel-shaped candle holders. In front of the altar was a stone of some kind, smooth and green and perfectly round.

_Huh. Maybe they used it in some kind of ceremony?_ Bakura thought about picking it up, but then he noticed a key lying just behind it. He took that instead and examined it. There was a bellflower pattern on its surface, but he didn't remember seeing a lock like that anywhere in the mansion. Still, it would probably be useful. Bakura pocketed it for the future and turned to the door.

The priestess girl abruptly reappeared, and this time she raised her stake as she glided at him. Bakura hissed a curse and lifted his camera, but just as she came into focus the girl disappeared. He blinked and lowered the camera a little, looking around for her.

"_Are you hurt?"_

The voice came from below him, and Bakura looked down to find the girl halfway through the floor, her ghostly stake positioned just above his foot and her hammer arm raised to strike. He jerked back with a shout and snapped the shutter, not bother to aim the camera. The shot must have been true, for the girl cried out and pulled herself back up through the floor. Then she began to circle him. Bakura tracked her until she disappeared again, and this time he backed up so that she wouldn't try to stake him.

The piercing pain in his back told him that she had changed her tactics.

He whirled around, trying to focus just enough to snap her picture, but she had disappeared again. Disoriented, Bakura stumbled over to the table and used it for support until his head cleared, and then he saw the girl rushing at him with outstretched stake. He raised the camera and snapped her photo again, pushing her back. This time when she disappeared, he stepped into the center of the room and scanned everything around him.

When the priestess came at him again, she came through the wall near the door, enabling Bakura to easily snap her picture twice. She cried out and sank into the floor, and a small gray book appeared where she vanished.

Bakura frowned and walked forward cautiously to pick it up. The girl didn't come back, and he relaxed a little, studying the book. It looked like a diary, and he opened it to find a child's large scrawl across its pages.

_I wonder if being impaled hurts._

_I wonder which hurts worse, having the stake go in a little bit at a time, or having it stabbed through all at once._

_I wonder if they die if the stake goes all the way through. I wonder if it matters if they die._

_I want to impale a real priestess soon._

Bakura dropped the book as if it burned.

From somewhere, the strains of a lullaby reached his ears.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace. Sleep, priestess, lie in peace."_

* * *

He woke up to pain, the patterned bruise spreading across his chest and arms, and the sound of the rain coming down yet again.


	6. The Vacant Dream

_Short chapter this time, but it's all I had outlined. This is where I start to deviate from the game at last. Enjoy and remember: reviews are welcome._

_**Hour V: The Vacant Dream**_

Bakura found himself humming the song at different points in the day.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace…"_

He shook himself and turned on the radio while he finished cooking breakfast.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace…"_

He was back at work in the small bookstore, and the manager asked him about the tune as he stocked the shelves. Bakura said it was nothing and finished in silence.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace…"_

He was home, doing his evening chores. He turned sharply when he realized what he was singing, half expecting to see something sneaking up behind him. Nothing was there, and he let out a shaky breath. He didn't know what was worse, the dreams that plagued him at night or the waiting for sleep to come and wondering if something was in his apartment during his waking hours. Nothing had shown itself since the girl in his closet yesterday morning, but Bakura had been on his guard ever since. As a result, he was constantly wound up tighter than a coil from tension, and he jumped at every little noise, every shadow that crossed his wall, every movement in the corner of his eye that always turned out to be a stray bit of hair or his own reflection in a mirror.

_I'm going to stroke out long before these dreams kill me, _he wrote in his diary to Amane that evening. _One way or another, I can't keep living like this. I have to find you in the manor, and soon._

* * *

_Snow._

_The clink of hammer on steel._

_A scene of a small, ancient village._

_Heat. Bright golden light._

Bakura opened his eyes in the room that he had been in the night before. He was gasping for breath, terrified beyond reason. A sharp pain throbbed through his chest, and he stared around wildly, though he had no idea what he was looking for.

Red dolls pinned to the walls were all he saw. Beside him, the small table stood with its altar and candles. Nothing had changed, and no ghosts awaited him.

Bakura lay back and made a conscious effort to slow his breathing. His fingers were already tingling from hyperventilation, and he had no desire to make it worse. After a few minutes, his panic attack lessened, and he found himself able to think again.

"What's wrong with me?" he whispered aloud as he sat up. Sure, these dreams were terrible, but he had thought he was dealing with it. He could do nothing more than follow Amane deeper into the mansion and fight off any spirits he encountered along the way. Why, then, was today different? Why did he wake up in this hellhole with such a feeling of terror he thought he was going to die on the spot?

_Those flashes I had. They reminded me of the older dreams._

Those other nightmares. The ones his mind shied away from even as he tried to remember them. As if they were born of some deep memory that would break him if he recalled it.

_But I can handle it!_ he told himself. _Surely whatever those old dreams were can't be as bad as this._

Yet doubts lingered as he stood up and went to the door. It was unlocked, and he stepped out into the corridor to the garden courtyard. Turning to his right, he tried the door at the end of the hall, but like before, it was locked. With nowhere else to go, Bakura went back to the garden courtyard. It was the same as before, snow falling on the bare limbs of the tree in the middle and the skewered dolls all around it. _Funny how the snow is always falling but never seems to pile up,_ he thought. _I guess that's just the way dreams are, though._

Because he hadn't bothered before, he walked around to the sealed double doors to his right. Candles flickered in tall sconces to either side of it, giving him a good view of the multiple ropes stretched across them. Behind those ropes, fixed to the doors themselves, was something that he had earlier thought was a paper seal. Up close, he could see that it was a piece of leather, though he couldn't tell what animal it came from. He bent down for a closer look, reaching out a hand to touch it.

"_The seal must never be broken,"_ said a voice behind him. _"That door, the priestess…"_

Bakura jumped out of his skin and whirled around. Behind him was the man with the blood-stained meat cleaver. Currently he held the weapon at his side, seeming to stare through Bakura to the door. The boy stared back at him for a minute that stretched on and on.

The spirit faded, and he let out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding. Slowly, he stepped away from the doors and started back around the walkway to the corridor on the other side. Without warning, the ghost appeared again just behind him and charged with meat cleaver outside. Bakura shouted in surprise and dove forward, stumbling past the entrance to the corridor. He turned around and snapped off a quick shot that missed, and then he headed for the nearest exit—the single door in the wall in front of the tree. Thankfully, it was unlocked, and he dashed through it into the storage room beyond. The door slammed shut behind him, and silence descended.

Bakura backed away, holding the camera up, but the spirit didn't come through the door. It seemed to be content with simply chasing him out of the garden courtyard. Finally, Bakura dropped the camera and turned around to walk into the storage room. This place was quiet and empty, too. Curious, he climbed the stairs to the second floor. As he ascended, he was able to see into a room beyond, which was missing part of the wall above the stairwell. Most of his view was blocked by several kimonos draped over racks, however, so he gave up on that and moved down the hall at the top of the stairs to the door that led into the room.

It was locked. Bakura frowned. _What, is there no where new to go tonight? How am I supposed to find Amane if I can't get through any doors?_

Nothing showed up to answer him, so he went back down the stairs and through the door to the bell hallway. His hair stood on end as the door swung shut behind him, and Bakura hesitated. From here he could only see the entrance room at the far end, and nothing seemed to be there. He stepped forward with caution, peering both ways as he reached the cross hall.

A little girl with pigtails and shrine priestess's clothes stood at the end of the hall to his left. _"Nii-san,"_ she whispered as she looked at him, and then she vanished.

Bakura stood rooted to the floor. _Nii-san. Brother. The ghost called me 'brother.'_

But that little girl wasn't Amane. Maybe she was just confusing him for someone else. Many of the spirits in this manor seemed to be doing that.

_Well, she didn't seem to want to hurt me,_ he thought. In fact, she had seemed like she wanted him to come to her. Bakura shrugged. Any direction was fine with him at this point, as long as it wasn't backward. He turned down the left hall and walked through the door at its end.

This was the large room that was divided into sections. Bakura hadn't taken a good look around the previous night, so he took the time to poke around a little. The loft to his left held only an assortment of empty dressers and boxes, and the room under it was devoid of anything except a doll the size of a small child against the far wall. A hall ran beside and behind that room, with a door at the end and an alcove that held another door. Bakura didn't bother to try either of them; he rather wanted to just go back to the front of the mansion and leave, if possible. Going forward was impossible tonight, but he didn't much care for going sideways instead.

However, when he came back to the main part of the room he felt his skin prickle again. At first nothing was visible, but the clock beside him suddenly tolled.

_Bong._

With a shimmer of air, a spirit appeared.

_Bong._

Her pale skin was mutilated with ink, face, arms and bare chest traced all over with blue and purple designs.

_Bong._

Bakura felt his blood freeze as her malevolent gaze fixed on him.

_Bong._

He wheeled around and fled back down the hall.

_Bong._

"_No one will survive…no one."_

_Bong._

He reached the end of the hall and slammed into the door as he fumbled with the knob. To his horror, it wouldn't turn.

_Bong._

He looked over his shoulder. The tattooed woman was at the corner, walking forward with the slow surety of a hunter who knows its prey is cornered.

_Bong._

Bakura dove desperately for the alcove. The woman reached out for him, but she just missed him and he scrambled into the tiny corridor.

_Bong._

The door at the end was covered with paper seals. Bakura yanked on it desperately, and to his complete surprise, it opened.

_Bong._

He flung himself through and slammed it shut. The silence was immediate and total. Chest heaving, he leaned against the door and slid down to sit. Like the man in white before, the tattooed woman didn't come through the door. _Maybe they're confined to certain rooms sometimes,_ he thought. With disgust, he looked down at the Camera Obscura. He hadn't even thought of trying to use it against that spirit. Maybe he should have, but for some reason he didn't think it would have an effect on her. She exuded an aura of enormous power, enough to match the darkness of the Shadow Realm. Bakura realized suddenly that he thought of her much the same as he thought of Zorc.

He touched his fingers to his chest, where she had brushed him that first night. _Is that woman the cause of all this? Did she trap me in these dreams? What about Yoshino? That mother and daughter? All the other ghosts in here?_

He sighed. There was no way to ask her, and no way to find out except to keep going. He stood up and looked around at the new room.

To his surprise, he was outside again, and this place looked nothing like the Manor of Sleep. He seemed to be in a village surrounded by a high stone wall. It was no longer snowing, but dark clouds obscured the sky and kept the village in darkness that was relieved only by torches burning by doors and at street corners. The entire place was in ruins.

Bakura walked to the nearest building. It was a one room hut made of adobe, with blank windows and a gaping hole where the door used to be. He shined his flashlight around the interior, but there was nothing there but broken shards of pottery and splinters of wood. He walked to the next two huts, but they were much the same.

An uneasy feeling settled in his gut as he wandered through the tiny village. Somehow, he didn't seem to be in Japan anymore; if anything, this looked like a place in Egypt. _I guess anything is possible in a dream, but this is still weird._

The feeling grew as he passed a few buildings with stains on the walls that looked a lot like blood, and finally he stopped in a small square backed by the largest building in town. This must have been a gathering hall of some sort, or perhaps the house of the town's leader. He couldn't tell. All he knew was that he didn't want to go in. In fact, he felt a sudden, powerful urge to run as far as he could from this place.

Bakura looked around, but he was alone. There were no ghosts here to torment him. There were no unexplained sounds or songs from nowhere. There was nothing to indicate that anyone at all had lived here except for the smears of dried blood. Other than him, the place was utterly vacant.

Bakura turned around and walked back to the door in the wall, his heart beating wildly in his chest. _What is this place? Why is it here? Was it the tattooed woman who created it? Or is the pig-tailed priestess trying to show me something?_

Halfway there, he could no longer control himself and broke into a run. Once he reached the door, however, he hesitated, remembering what he had left on the other side. What if the tattooed woman was still there?

He reached out at the knob with a trembling hand, but he heard a small scuffing sound behind him, and he whirled around, bringing the camera up to his face.

The ghost of a dark-haired girl in strange clothing was running away from him. Bakura blinked as she vanished around a corner. He could have sworn that nothing was here. Somehow, though, he didn't feel threatened. In fact, the girl looked a lot like his sister.

"Amane?" he called, trotting after her. He turned the corner just in time to see her whip out of sight a few huts away. He ran after her, not realizing until it was too late that she was leading him to the large building in the middle of town. He slowed down as she ran through the doors and then he walked forward and stopped in front of them. His bad feeling had come back full force. Bakura wasn't sure he wanted to follow the girl any more.

_But what if it really was Amane? What is she doing here, and why is she dressed like that?_

Bakura took a deep breath and pushed the doors open. The interior consisted of one large room. It may have once been well-furnished, but now the tables and chairs were tossed randomly against the walls and lay in heaps, broken and rotting. More splotches of blood covered the floor. Bakura shivered as he looked around. _It looks like someone fought a battle in here._

In the middle of the floor was a sunken stairwell, leading to a door that must have led to a basement. The girl stood before it, looking up at him. He could see now that she wasn't Amane. She was a little too young, and her skin and hair were too dark. Her clothing looked like something that would have been worn in ancient Egypt.

Bakura swallowed past a lump in his throat. The girl looked so afraid. "I won't hurt you," he said, starting down the steps. "What happened here?"

The girl vanished.

Bakura stopped for a second, surprised. Then he continued down the door, where he stopped again as a spike of pure terror drove through him.

The door was plain, ordinary wood. It was undistinguishable from any other door in any number of houses in any place. Yet for some reason, Bakura could barely stand to even look at it.

_Something terrible lies beyond that door. Something evil._

He was assaulted by the fleeting impression of heat and light, and he turned around, scrambling back up the stairs and out of the building.

* * *

He awoke sitting straight up, his screams drowning out the sound of the rain on his windows.


	7. The Subduing Song

_Back to the game for the most part; this chapter is partly Kei's first dream in the game and partly my own imagination. I promise we'll get back to that Egyptian village, though it may take a while. Also, this chapter would have been up six hours ago if I hadn't been watching the Olympics while typing it. Go world!_

_**Hour VI: The Subduing Song**_

Bakura stayed in bed for most of the morning. He was too afraid to move. His mind raced over and over through the dream, even as he sat with his legs drawn up to his chest, tense and waiting for the slightest movement or noise to indicate that something was amiss in his apartment. Every creak had him staring into the corners. Every shadow that crossed his wall made him wince.

The ring of the telephone nearly gave him a heart attack.

He sat frozen through three rings, and then he jumped out of bed, darting nervous glances all around as he walked quickly to the living room to pick it up. "Hello?"

The connection was a little scratchy, but Yugi's voice came through clear enough. "Bakura-kun! I was beginning to think you weren't home."

"I am. I just…" Bakura closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. "I had a bad night."

Yugi was silent for a minute. "Maybe I should come over."

"Yeah," Bakura said, nodding his head without stopping to think that Yugi couldn't see the gesture. "Yeah, I'd like that very much."

"I've got some stuff you'll want to see. Be over in a few minutes."

Bakura put the phone down and rubbed his eyes. He had to pull himself together better before Yugi came over. He had been having nightmares for almost a week now; no reason to fall apart over the newest one. There hadn't been anything about it that was worse than the others. There weren't even any hostile ghosts in that strange Egyptian area.

He shivered and tried again to block that memory. It was worse. Somehow, it was worse. He couldn't figure out why, and he didn't really want to.

_But it's part of the house. I have to find the connection. If I don't, I'll die._

He knew that with a sudden crushing certainty. Either he went deeper into the house, learned its secrets, and found a way out, or he would turn into ashes and a trapped spirit. If his nerves didn't snap from the constant tension first.

He shook his head and went back to his room to dress. By the time Yugi arrived, he had managed to calm himself down and clean up his apartment so it at least looked decent. He had even pulled open the curtains to let some light in, but the effect was hampered by the rain that hadn't yet seemed to stop.

Yugi was trying to shake the water off his raincoat when Bakura pulled open the door to let him in. "I'm glad the weather wasn't this bad when we went camping," he said cheerfully. "When is the last time you remember seeing the sun?"

"When we went camping," Bakura replied, stepping back to let him in.

Yugi turned and gave him a sharp look as he kicked off his shoes, and Bakura had the feeling that the shorter boy could see right through his composed façade. "Did you learn that look from the pharaoh?" he asked, annoyed for some reason that he couldn't pinpoint.

"N-no?" Yugi replied.

Bakura sighed. _Way to alienate your best friend and only help._ "I'm sorry," he said aloud.

Yugi merely squeezed his arm and walked into the living room. Bakura followed and sat down on the couch, his eyes darting around as someone walked past outside, throwing a long shadow on the wall.

"You're really on edge," Yugi said, settling into the chair opposite. "How long can you handle this?"

Bakura thought for a moment, his gaze focusing somewhere beyond his window. _Get through the house or die._ "As long as I must," he said at last.

Yugi nodded and pulled a couple of books out of his bookbag. "I found some interesting stuff at the library yesterday. All I had to do was ask the librarian about old legends and vanishings, and she pointed me right toward a few books written by folklorists." He opened one, flipped to a certain page, and then pushed the book across the table. "I bet you'll find this interesting."

Bakura picked up the book and read the chapter. It talked about a shrine that had once been up in the mountains. People believed that the shrine sat on the border of the world of the dead, and they went to the shrine to offer their pain to those who had departed. Gradually a house had been built around the shrine, and a certain family guarded it. A priestess became the focal point of the ritual: the people came to offer their pain to her, and she would tattoo it onto her skin in blue and purple ink. Something had happened in the late 1820s however, and since then the shrine had been abandoned and the house had fallen into disrepair. The overall story was all too familiar.

"I know this," he said, rubbing his arms. Goosebumps puckered his flesh.

Yugi frowned at him in confusion.

"I picked up a book in that house…in the dream," Bakura explained. He grimaced, knowing how crazy that sounded, but continued anyway. "It talked about the same things. The house, the shrine where people offer their pain."

"You sure?" the smaller boy asked. "You could just think you remember something similar."

Bakura shook his head. "No, it was the same story, only in the book I read in the manor, whatever had caused the shrine to be abandoned hadn't happened yet. It was written in old language, and the author talked about the place like it was still in use. But it's the same story, I know it." He paused again. "And I think it's the same house that we found while camping."

"I think so, too," Yugi said. "Your dreams started the same night that we found it. That can't be a coincidence." He tapped the other book. "This one has some stories about the general area, including a lot of vanishings. I don't know if it'll be any help, but I thought that it couldn't hurt."

"Thanks. I'll read through it."

"Good. Now, to get your mind off all this mess for a while, how about a duel?" Yugi pulled out his deck with a grin.

Bakura blinked. "Yugi-kun, I don't think I have the time to mess around with Duel Monsters right now."

"Sure you do," Yugi said. "You've got to do something else. You'll die of stress if you don't."

And since Bakura had been thinking along the same lines a scant hour earlier, he got up to find his own deck. As he went to his room, he glanced into the kitchen and stopped dead. A man-shaped hovered in the middle of the room, hunched over and facing away from him. Without thinking, Bakura pulled a picture frame off the wall and hurled it at the spirit. It passed through of course, and shattered against the far wall.

"Bakura-kun!" Yugi ran over and joined him, staring into the kitchen.

The shadow stayed a second longer, and then it faded into the air.

Silence reigned for several more seconds as Bakura panted, his heart racing as though he had just run a race. "Did you see it?" he asked finally.

Yugi only looked at him.

"Am I going crazy?" Bakura asked next. He was trying not to tremble.

"No," Yugi said.

Bakura shook his head. "How can you just accept all this?"

Yugi gave a small laugh. "We both lived for years with ancient spirits inside us, and you think this is strange?"

Bakura couldn't help but smile a little. "No, I guess not," he said.

"Besides," the shorter boy continued. "I doubt that the Millennium Items were the only magic in the world."

"I've found some more," Bakura said.

"Looks like."

There was a short pause. "I don't like it."

Yugi stared at the shattered picture frame resting on the stove. "Me either."

* * *

_Snow._

_Cold._

_The ringing of hammer meeting stake._

_An old woman standing over a body on the ground._

_A prison, hanging in midair._

When Bakura woke, he found himself in the ruined Egyptian town, just outside the door to the central building. He shuddered as he scrambled to his feet, and without a single glance back, he made his way to the door in the wall that would lead back to the manor. Anywhere was better than this.

_Never again,_ he thought as he stepped through into the decayed hall and shut the door behind him. _I'm not going back there no matter what._

He turned his attention to his surroundings, wondering what to do now. The faint chill in the air was unremarkable; no ghosts were nearby. Nothing was around to draw his attention or drive him away. Bakura shrugged and tried the door to his right. It was locked, with a long-haired doll stuck to the door. The air around it prickled and shimmered. Bakura frowned. He had encountered this before, several nights ago when he had first discovered the room that Yoshino had attacked him in. It was a spell of some sort. Pausing just a second, he focused his camera on the doll and snapped a photo. Something else came to his mind as the flash cleared: an image of a woman sitting in front of a mirror, clumps of black hair pinned to the wall around it. He shivered as the image faded, but he also recognized it. The mirror was in the second floor room that was filled with kimonos. He turned to make his way back into the main room, where the door to the bell hallway was. The kimono room was fairly close; perhaps he could make it there and back without running into anything.

He had just come out from under the loft when the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

"_Who are you?"_

The voice came from above and behind him. Bakura spun around and looked up to the loft. The spirit that stared down at him was old and stooped. The two stared at each other for several seconds, and Bakura wondered if he should answer the question. It was the first time a ghost had directly acknowledged his presence beyond something living to attack. Well, there had been the pig-tailed girl, and the dark-haired ghost he had chased last night in the Egyptian town (_no, don't think about that place_), but they had never addressed him like this.

Before he could make up his mind, the ghost vanished from the loft and reappeared right in front of him, a mere ten steps away. _"Amane, you broke the commandment," _it said. _"How could you lead a man to the Kuze Shrine?"_

"Amane?" Bakura whispered. _What?_

A multitude of disembodied arms formed in the air around the spirit. Bakura yelped and raised his camera, snapping off a shot just as two of the arms detached themselves and flew toward him.

The camera clicked tiredly, and the arms flew through his abdomen without slowing. Bakura wheezed and doubled over, folding his arms around his middle. The attack didn't make him dizzy or disoriented, but the deep chill numbed his stomach, and his legs felt heavy and hard to move. He stumbled and almost fell as he slipped back, trying to put some distance between himself and the ghost. It didn't move except to send two more arms flying at him.

Bakura barely dodged this attack by slipping and falling to the ground just as the arms reached him. Picking up the camera, he tried again to take a picture, but again the shutter only clicked uselessly. _I can't fight this ghost,_ he realized, and he pushed himself back to his feet, running for the door at the back of the room.

The chill of the ghost's presence faded as he ran through the door and slammed it behind him, leaving only the usual cold of the abandoned house. For good measure, he hurried through the bell hallway and went through the north door into the storage room, not content to rest until he had put two doors between himself and the wicked old spirit. With a sigh, he slumped to the ground in front of the stairs and waited for the feeling to return to his abdomen and legs.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace… Sleep, priestess, lie in peace…"_

At first he sang it to himself, but when he trailed off, he realized that he was hearing the tune from somewhere else. It was faint, but there was a child singing somewhere in the manor. To Bakura it seemed to come from the very walls.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace. Sleep, priestess lie in peace. If the priestess wakes from her sleep, perform the rite, her limbs pinned tight…"_

Bakura stood up suddenly, the sound of his movement drowning out the rest of the song. _Limbs pinned tight?_ he thought. The possibilities implied by the lyric made his stomach roil. _But it's just a song,_ he told himself as he started up the staircase in the room. _No need to think about it that much._

Unbidden, the memory of the first vision, four girls surrounding his supine form with stakes held ready at his hands and feet, sprang to mind. Bakura shuddered and pushed it away as he walked into the kimono room.

A sharp twang filled the air, as if someone had been playing the koto in the corner and hit a bad note. However, when he peered around the kimono stand he saw the spirit of a woman sitting at the mirror instead. The koto's corner was empty.

Bakura edged forward. The ghost didn't notice his presence at all; she merely sat at her mirror and ran a comb through her hair. He stopped just before he reached the middle of the room and raised the camera. _This had better be good enough to break that seal,_ he thought as he snapped the spirit's picture.

The camera didn't seem to hurt her, but it did catch her attention. Her comb stopped mid-stroke, and she slowly turned her head in his direction. _"Is someone there?"_

Bakura cursed and headed for the door.

"_I won't let you go!"_ the woman wailed as he slammed it behind him. Too late, he remembered that her room had no wall between it and the stairwell, and he nearly fell when she swooped at him from above. She disappeared after her miss, and he took the opportunity to clatter down the last of the steps and run for the door to the bell hallway.

She appeared right in front of it. _"I won't let you go."_

"Not asking your permission," Bakura muttered, raising the camera. The shot was off-center, but it forced the woman back long enough for him to run past and get into the bell hallway. Slamming the door behind him, he back up a few steps and waited just to be sure, but the spirit didn't follow. Bakura let out the breath he had been holding and turned to look at the door to the sectioned room. The spirit of the old woman might still be there, and she was somehow immune to the camera's power. Bakura wondered if there was some other way to get to the sealed door. Then he shook his head at the ridiculousness of that and walked over to the door. Steeling himself for a run to the door (and praying that he had broken the spell), he opened it.

The slight chill and musty smell of an empty room greeted him. The old woman's spirit was nowhere to be found.

It was a relief, but Bakura also felt a little perturbed. He had spent some time getting ready for a confrontation, and now he had the restless energy of unused adrenaline running through his system. Just to work it off, he detoured up the stairs to the loft, where the old woman had been standing before. Perhaps she had left something behind.

After searching through the loft and finding nothing new, he realized what he was really looking for: something that connected the old woman to Amane. She had mentioned Amane's name earlier, but the context was confusing. _Did she mean my sister, or is there another Amane in this manor?_

If there was an answer, he wouldn't find it here. Bakura left the loft and went back around to the door that had been sealed earlier. As he turned into the hall, the air grew colder. He stopped just as the spirit of the man with the cleaver appeared, walking toward the door that had been sealed. _"It's not enough,"_ he said, taking no notice of the boy behind him. _"We need more sacrifices. More blood."_

Bakura raised his camera, but the spirit vanished through the door before he could snap a photo, and all he could do was follow. The doll was gone, and when he tried the handle, it opened easily. The room beyond was large and square, its center blocked by four translucent curtains. Voices emanated from beyond the curtains, and Bakura stopped again, hoping not to draw the attention of the spirits.

"_It is not enough," _came the voice of the old woman. _"The Rift continues to spread. We need more blood."_

"_All the sacrifices have been gathered,"_ the man with the cleaver replied. _"I myself shall be the final sacrifice."_

There was a pause, and then the woman spoke again. _"I am sorry to have put you through all this, but the priestess must not be allowed to escape."_

Both spirits faded. Bakura stared at the enclosed area, but he decided not to push his luck and investigate it, and instead walked around it. To his left was a stairwell that led up to a loft, but before he could ascend, the ghost of the young shrine maiden with pigtails caught his eye. She was walking into an alcove in the left wall, singing a familiar song as she went. Bakura followed her and found that the alcove was another stairwell, this one descending to another door. The girl stood for a second before the door, and then she disappeared.

"Wait!" Bakura said, though he knew it was futile. _Who is this girl and why is she helping me?_ Taking the stairs two at a time, he rushed to the bottom and through the door.

This room was octagonal. Only the far wall had any decoration, and it held an elaborate shrine. Overhead was a wooden cage. Bakura squinted and walked around the room's edge, but it wasn't big enough to see what was in the cage. He thought maybe there was a body, or something in the shape of a body, but he couldn't be sure. After a few minutes he gave up and went to examine the shrine.

On either side of the shrine were compartments in the wall with pieces of what looked like leather stretched across the back. Both were dyed with the same snake and holly design that was inked into the skin of the tattooed woman. Bakura looked away, feeling nauseous when the implication of that hit him. He turned his attention to the shrine itself, which was rather normal other than being somewhat large. In front of it sat four stones about the size of his palm, light blue, dark blue, red, and green. Behind them were four slots that he guessed they would fit in.

Bakura picked up one of the stones, and immediately he heard part of the song in his head. _"Sleep, priestess, lie in peace."_

He dropped it in surprise. Then he picked up another one.

"_Perform the rite, her limbs pinned tight."_

"Okay, I think I see how this works," he muttered, placing the stone into the last slot. Then he started picking up the stones and putting them in the slots. He paused, and then rearranged them, satisfied at the click that sounded within the shrine as he placed the last one.

"_Sleep, priestess, lie in peace. Sleep, priestess, lie in peace. If the priestess wakes from her sleep, perform the rite, her limbs pinned tight. Lest the doors open wide and suffering unleashed on all."_

As the last chord faded, the cage shuddered and began to move upward. Bakura walked to the center of the room and watched it ascend, but it was soon lost to darkness even though he could hear the grinding of the gears and pulleys that lifted the cage. As the sounds stopped, the pig-tailed girl appeared again beside him.

"_Nii-san, Reika wants to see you."_

Bakura started and looked down at her, but she glided forward and through the room's door before he could say anything. "Who's Reika?" he wondered, following her.

The girl was walking up the stairs right outside, and he followed her up to the curtained room and then to the left, to a door that he hadn't seen before. Going through that, he emerged into a much colder hall that turned to the left. The girl had disappeared.

He hurried forward and turned the corner to find that he was back in the garden courtyard. Ahead and to the right, the girl was waiting by the sealed double doors. _"This way,"_ she beckoned, and then she vanished.

Bakura walked over to the door, but they were still covered with seals and sacred rope. _How does she expect me to follow her through that?_

Then the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he froze in place.

"_It must not be opened."_ It was the voice of the man with the cleaver. _"That door…the priestess must not be released."_

* * *

Bakura awoke and sat up, his heart pounding. With a stab just above his heart, the painful bruise manifested and spread. The feeble light coming through the rain-streaked window revealed a clear pattern of snakes and holly leaves as they drew themselves across his chest, shoulders, arms, and stomach.

It was the same as the pattern on the pieces of leather flanking the shrine. The same as the pattern on the tattooed woman.

Bakura closed his eyes. _I'm going to die._


	8. The Sacrificial Pillar

_**Hour VII: The Sacrificial Pillar**_

Despite his certainty that morning—or perhaps because of it—Bakura kept reading through the books Yugi had found for him. The second one in particular held a lot more information than the younger boy could have guessed, probably because Bakura still hadn't told him everything.

Mostly he was intrigued by the stories of shrine carpenters. Some shrines in the mountains were maintained by a single family of master carpenters. When major construction or repairs had to be done, every carpenter who did the work was often killed to preserve the shrine's secrets. Only one would be left alive, declared the Master Builder so that he could pass his knowledge on to the next generation. There were a few photos, showing men who wore all white and stood proudly in front of their shrines.

Bakura remembered the men in white who ran from him in the mansion, and the one with the meat cleaver who attacked him over and over again. _Were they carpenters? Did they die to keep the secrets of this house? Did the man with the meat cleaver kill them all?_

He felt sick thinking about it.

_That door must not be opened. The priestess must not be released._

"They built something to contain the priestess," he mused aloud, staring out his water-streaked window. "And then they were killed. To keep the mansion's secrets? Or to keep the priestess from escaping?"

But the priestess had escaped. She wandered all through the mansion. The first night of his nightmares, she had found him in the entrance hall and touched him. That spot on his chest ached at the memory.

Bakura never once thought that the priestess might be someone else. He _knew_ with a surety that he had never before known that the tattooed woman was the priestess that had been sealed away. _A priestess once responsible for taking away people's pain. Now she's giving pain back in spades. I wonder what happened to her. What made her this way?_

He thought about it for a long while, turning over what he had learned from the books and what different ghosts in the mansion had said.

As it turned out, the ghost he had met just the previous night had the best clue. _That old woman said something about Amane, but I don't think she meant my sister. There's another Amane in that house, one that lived at the same time as the disaster. She said that Amane broke a commandment by leading a man into the shrine…_

His skin prickled as his thread of logic continued. _The little girl called me "brother." She's been helping me, and she said that Reika wanted to see me. Is she Amane? Did she lead a man into the shrine before? A man…like her brother? Is she mistaking me for her brother now? Because I'm searching for my sister…_

The implications were too confusing to think about. Bakura contented himself to write it all down in his journal, and left it until nightfall.

* * *

_Snow._

_Cold._

_The sound of stakes being hammered._

_A man in a hall, meat cleaver held high._

_A pale figure, reaching out for him._

_A courtyard full of gravestones._

Bakura was in front of the doors in the garden courtyard, just where the dream had ended last night. He stood up quickly and looked around, but the man with the meat cleaver (_the Master Builder?_) was nowhere to be seen. He looked back at the doors just in time to see a too-familiar figured vanish through it.

"Amane!" he cried, darting forward. He pulled up just before he reached the doors, however. The power radiating from the seals was palpable in the frigid air; he dared not even touch them. With shaking hands, he lifted the camera instead, hoping against hope that it could somehow break this seal and allow him to reach his sister.

The shutter gave its usual _click_, but the seals didn't fall away, nor did their power decrease the slightest bit. Instead, an image imprinted itself in Bakura's mind through the camera's flash. He saw four men, carpenters by their looks, though they didn't have the terrified demeanor of the others he had faced. These only looked resigned, their robes covered with blood and their faces darkened with tattoos.

Bakura let the camera fall to its place against his chest and frowned. _What does this mean? Do these men have some connection to the seal?_

He waited, but nothing more happened, so with a shrug he turned left and headed for the corridor that would take him to the two-sided hallway the led to the projector room. As he walked around, a flash of white caught his eye, and he whipped his head around to see the man with the meat cleaver standing in front of the tree. He grabbed the camera, but this time the spirit paid him no heed at all. It merely looked up at the tree and then bowed its head.

"_Still…not enough."_

Then it vanished.

Bakura lowered the camera. "Not enough what?" he wondered aloud.

The unwelcome answer came with the memory of all the times he had seen the man before. _More sacrifices. More blood._

He shuddered and ran down the corridor to the two-sided hallway. Remembering that the tattooed priestess had been here with him the last time he had come through, he also ran down this hall to the projector room. Nothing accosted him, however, and he slowed to a walk through the silent, musty projector room. As he opened the next door into the bell hallway, he struck paydirt in the form of a carpenter's spirit.

"_Huh?" _the ghost said, turning sharply at the sound of the door creaking open. It took one look at Bakura and bolted for the sectioned room. _"Stay away!"_

Bakura's first instinct was to whirl around, certain that the priestess would be standing right behind him. Nothing was there, and he stepped forward and closed the door behind him. _If only every ghost ran from me like that,_ he thought ruefully. _I wonder why he's so scared._

The thought was unsettling, but there was nothing else he could do. Bakura followed the spirit's flight.

As soon as he reached the cross-corridor, his flashlight began to reveal thick, bright red spots of liquid. He stopped, letting the beam play ahead, and the spots became a puddle that rested just outside the door to the sectioned room. Bakura's stomach turned.

"Pull yourself together," he hissed at himself. "It's already dead. You're not going to find a body behind the door."

He kept close to the wall as he walked forward, but still he couldn't help stepping in the blood as he reached the door, his shoes making a sick squelching sound when he put his feet down. The door itself refused to open, stuck as if it were being held shut by someone on the other side. A low moan came from the room, one that sounded much like what he had heard in the stained corridor—how many nights ago now? It still made his hair stand on end.

Bakura gave up and turned back to the cross-corridor. Just as he reached it, a movement caused him to look up, chills shuddering down his spine.

A girl, one of the shrine maidens, was walking along some boards placed on the support beams overhead. He had never even noticed the lack of a proper ceiling before.

_How do I get up there?_ he wondered. She had come from the direction of the storage room, so he turned that way and went in.

More blood graced the floor, leading to a small space behind a dresser that had been shoved under the stairs. Bakura followed it around, keeping his camera at the ready as his body shook with the chill of a nearby spirit.

It was another carpenter, huddled on the floor with his back to Bakura. It didn't move and gave no indication that it knew it had been found. Bakura watched him for a moment, suddenly feeling less fear and a good deal more pity. _What did you people go through? Why did you die like this?_

He took the ghost's picture.

"_Please…help me,"_ was all it said before it vanished.

Bakura shook his head. "I wish I could," he said quietly, and then he took the stairs up to the kimono room. He could hear the sound of the koto in the corner as he reached the door, and as he entered he could see the long-haired woman's spirit hovering there. She didn't turn to him immediately, so Bakura took the opportunity to ignore her and head over to a part of the room he hadn't bother to explore. This was a short hall with one end that overlooked the stairs to the storage room below, and another that ended at a large set of double doors. Just in front of him was a half-door, and when he opened it he found the plank path that overlooked the bell hallway below.

It was a cramped space, and he had to bend over as he walked. The planks ended where the bell hall opened into the entrance room, and Bakura was able to stand up. He looked ahead with a sense of dread; there were two platforms built against the walls opposite and to his right, but the only way to reach them was to balance on the support beams.

_Oh, come on,_ he scolded himself. _You walked across slippery wet slanted tiles a few nights ago. Surely this can't be any worse._

Still, he prayed that no ghosts would bother him as he inched out onto the first support beam.

After five minutes that seemed to take an eternity, he finally stumbled onto the tiny platform that held a door. He went through the door and took a moment to sit down on the floor of the small, empty room on the other side, ignoring the ghost chill as he waited for his legs to stop shaking. _How did I not fall and kill myself?_

Soon enough, he willed himself to crawl over to the peephole in the floor that was the only feature in the room and look through.

He couldn't see much of the room below, only a huge Buddha statue that was almost directly below him and the woman who held a bowl of red liquid at its base, dipping her fingers into it spreading it across the statues feet.

"_Not enough blood."_ It was the voice of the old woman who had accused Amane the night before. _"Need more blood."_

Bakura backed up and stood. Somehow, the trip back through the support beams seemed easier to navigate, even though he was attacked by the spirit of a shrine maiden as he crept along. He managed to make it to the plank path, only to be startled out of his wits by the man with the meat cleaver as he walked through the bell hallway below.

"_So, there was another survivor."_

Bakura froze until the man vanished, and then he cursed in frustration and fear. "What is it with you people and your sacrifices and blood?" he snapped aloud.

_One hundred sacrifices are needed. Their blood and flesh must mix with the gold._

That voice wasn't from anyone in the mansion. That whispered from some dark corner of Bakura's own mind, and it scared him worse than anything he had yet encountered here. Anything except that Egyptian village and the room that shimmered with gold reflections—

_No. No. Don't think about that._ Bakura clutched his head and then shook it hard. _Not here. Not now. Never._

He waited just a moment longer, and then he finished the path to the kimono room. The long-haired woman was gone from her corner, but he hardly noticed as he made his way back down to the storage room. The blood stains were still on the floor, but the hiding spirit had not returned, so he continued to the bell hallway.

Two carpenters were just running along the cross-corridor when he entered. Both skidded to a halt and turned to him. _"Stay away!"_ one cried, and both lunged at him at once.

Bakura cried out and backed up, but he couldn't avoid them in the tiny hall, and he took both assaults at the same time. Head spinning and gut heaving with nausea, he stumbled forward and raised the camera, hitting the shutter repeatedly even though the weak clicks told him that he wasn't capturing anything on film. Another icy blow raked across his shoulders, and he whirled around, losing his balance and falling as he continued taking pictures. He heard a wail, and his vision cleared enough for him to see one of the ghosts backing away, though the other one was swinging its short spear right at his face.

Bakura centered him in the frame and hit the shudder. Both ghost cried out, caught in the exorcising photo, and they dissipated into nothing. Bakura laid back, breathing hard. His stomach still roiled, and moving his head made everything seem to dip and turn around him. He decided that he didn't like it when spirits tag-teamed him and resolved to be a little more vigilant the next time he opened a door.

Unfortunately, that was only a few minutes away, as he managed to steady himself enough to get up and go to the sectioned room. The force that had held that door shut was gone, and he walked through with ease, camera up and at the ready.

_Bong. Bong. Bong._

He jumped as the clock chimed. Just ahead, in the section that held a small altar and now a great deal of blood, a carpenter appeared. This one was not like the others, however; like the Master Builder he carried a meat cleaver, and his face was covered with tattoos. _Just like that image I saw at the door._

"_In order to keep the Rift from spreading,"_ it said in a deep voice, and it rushed forward, swinging the cleaver.

Bakura already held his camera at the ready. It was a simple matter to point and shoot. The man fell back with a grunt, and Bakura walked forward, clicking the camera one, two, three more times. Without a sound, the man sank to the ground, though instead of disappearing he seemed to catch fire. Blue flames leapt from his form, and Bakura jumped back with a yelp. However, the flames didn't spread. They only consumed the spirit and left nothing but a small book in their place.

After waiting a second, Bakura walked forward and picked up the book. The single word on the cover said _Moriya_. The carpenter's name, maybe? He opened the book and read the simple, two-page inscription on the inside.

_Top shrine carpenters have been gathered together to seal the Kuze Shrine into the depths of a great cavern so that not even a single ray of light can enter into the darkness._

_Then, we must erect a Shrine of the Rift in front of the great cavern using Spirit Trees as the core pillars, and with sacrificial pillars arranged so that the darkness is purified and the Right cannot leak into the world._

Bakura dropped the book. "Sacrificial pillars?" he wondered aloud, and the image of the human-shaped stains in a corridor came back to him. He shuddered and continued around the altar section to the doors that led to the hearth room.

The pig-tailed shrine priestess stood on the platform at the top of the ladder to his left. Bakura stepped toward her cautiously. "Amane?" he called, hesitating just a bit. "Are you Amane?"

The girl didn't answer. She simply disappeared.

Bakura huffed, shook his head, and took her hint. The door at the top was locked, but the lock had a bellflower pattern on it, and he remembered getting a matching key several nights ago. Finding it in a pocket, he unlocked the door and went through into a long room. A couple of dressers stood against the walls, and there was a table at the far end. Beside the table was a large hole in the floor, and a shrine maiden stood there, looking down into it. This one wasn't Amane; she wore her short hair undone except for a pin that kept it off her face.

"_These people have to be sacrificed," _she said in a gleeful voice. Then she disappeared.

Bakura stepped over slowly, afraid of what he would find. When he looked down, however, he could see only several futons with covers thrown over them. They looked to have human-sized shapes huddled in them, but there was no blood and no other obvious sign of a massacre. "So why did you lead me up here?" he muttered.

There was no answer, but he got the uncanny feeling that something down there was watching him, so he backed away and investigated the few pieces of furniture in the sparse room. On the table there was a key, which he pocketed without really looking at it. Other than that, he could find nothing, so he went back down to the hearth room.

It had been a long time since he had been in this section of the house. (_A long time. A few nights ago. When did that start feeling like such a long time?_) With nothing else to guide him, Bakura went into the entrance hall and made his way to the front doors.

Bloody footprints greeted his flashlight beam halfway there. Heart quickening, Bakura slowed his pace and lifted his camera. He could see the doors ahead of him. To the left was an alcove, and the blood turned in that direction. If something was here, it was in that corner.

A tattooed man stood as he peered around the bend. _"Use me, my body, as a sacrifice."_

Again, having his camera at the ready was Bakura's saving grace. The spirit jumped forward with his cleaver leading, and Bakura blasted him back with a quick snap of the camera. The man was pushed through the wall of the cramped space, so he couldn't continue his assault, but Bakura backed into the corner by the doors and waited for it to show its face again. It came out swinging, and he snapped two more pictures, prompting the ghost to burst into blue flame.

_Why are they doing that?_ he wondered as he watched the spirit burn into nothing. _Is it because they really are part of the seal? I must be breaking it!_

There had been four men in that imprint. He was halfway there.

Another book fell where the man had been, and Bakura picked it up out of sheer morbid curiosity.

_The Rift Shrine makes the priestess wander for eternity, and stakes must be used to impale her limbs while praying for her peaceful rest._

_When the priestess is restless, it is necessary to build on to the Shrine of Sleep and pray for her to slumber._

_The Shrine of Sleep is sealed within a dream to prevent the priestess from escaping and the spread of the Rift._

_To keep the Rift from spreading, we must ensure that she stays staked down, and pray for her eternal sleep._

That confused more things than it clarified. The most Bakura could figure was that something bad called the Rift had been unleashed, and it had something to do with the priestess. Also, she seemed to be staked down. That…was too unpleasant to think about. Bakura dropped the book and went to hunt for the final two tattooed men.

He found one in the stairs hallway, beside the door that led to the stained corridor. This one took him by surprise and managed to score a hit; Bakura had to sit and rest for several minutes before he could bother to read the book that the ghost had left in its wake.

_When building or repairing the Kuze Shrine and the Last Passage, all the carpenters of the Moriya family except for their leader must be prepared to stay behind, never to return._

_Excluding one who exceeds in their craft, all the carpenters must fulfill their duty to protect the secrets of the shrine by being buried as the sacrificial pillars lining it._

_The remaining Moriya carpenter must become the Master Builder and ensure that the craft is carried on to the next generation._

So…that old book of folklore had it right. At least he was on the right track with something. That didn't make Bakura feel any better, though. He left the book there and continued into the stained corridor in search of the final spirit.

After an eternity of walking the through the manor, he made his way back to the room that looked down on the futons. This time he noticed the opening in the back, and found a flight of stairs that led down two levels. There was a door on the first landing, and the key he had picked up earlier opened it.

On the other side was the room with the futons—and the final tattooed man. _"Here you will stay—"_ it began to snarl.

Bakura wasted no time in blowing it away with three shots. He waited as the spirit burned away, wailing that the priestess had to be stopped, and then he picked up the book that was left behind.

_After the Unleashing happened, the priestess who had wandered loose from the Chamber of Thorns roamed about the manor as if in a dream._

_Those passages the priestess entered were engulfed by the Rift, and fell into darkness._

_The Rift Shrine is a hidden shrine that ensure that the priestess wanders forever and never escapes, and the Rift does not spill forth._

That explained things a little better. The priestess was in a place called the Chamber of Thorns until something happened, something called the Unleashing. Then she created this Rift and began to spread it wherever she walked, so the carpenters had come in to build a shrine and perform a ritual to lock the priestess and the Rift in a dream so that they couldn't do any more damage.

_But they failed,_ he realized. _They sacrificied themselves, and they failed. The priestess might be locked in a dream, but she's reaching out and pulling people in here with her. The Rift is still spreading._

…_How is Amane connected to this? Why is she here?_

She had walked through those sealed doors, but the seal should have broken with the last tattooed spirit. Bakura turned and flew through the mansion until he reached the garden corridor. He slowed down, breathing heavily as he approached the doors, almost giddy with excitement. The sacred ropes were gone. He walked forward even as a chill rolled through his body.

"_That door must not be opened,"_ said the Master Builder behind him. _"The shrine must stay sealed."_

* * *

He woke up to the ringing of the telephone, the spreading pain of the tattoo, and the staccato beat of raindrops on the roof.


	9. The Unleashing

_**Hour VIII: The Unleashing**_

Bakura jumped out of bed and ran to the living room. The phone had to have been ringing for some time; if it was his father on the other end and he missed it—

"Hello?" he said, almost before the receiver was at his mouth.

No one answered him. The other end of the connection was silent but for a crackle of static. He wondered if the rain was messing with the phone lines.

"Hello, Father? Yugi?"

The voice that finally came back was neither, and it seemed to come from far away, as if someone was screaming at the phone from a distance.

"_Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!"_

Bakura slammed the phone down.

* * *

He took the folklore books with him to work. There was no new stock that day, so the manager set him at the register, and between customers he leafed through them idly. One of the books had legends and cultural beliefs from all over Japan, but the second book's stories were more focused on the region around the abandoned house that had started his living nightmare. It was near the end of his shift when he found an interesting chapter that Yugi had overlooked. Then again, he had never told Yugi about the song in his dreams.

He never once thought that it would be a real song, or that anyone would research it, but here it was, divided into two verses and analyzed.

_Sleep, child, go to sleep_

_Sleep, child, go to sleep_

_If you cry, the boat you'll ride_

_The boat to the other side_

_Once you get there_

_The bib you shall wear_

_And you will be punished_

_Should you fail to lie still_

_Sleep, child, go to sleep_

_Sleep, child, go to sleep_

_If you should wake_

_From your slumber at night_

_Great wooden stakes_

_Shall pin you down tight_

_Lest the doors open wide_

_And the others that sleep wake too_

It was unclear whether the song had started as a lullaby or as part of a ritual involving a priestess, but Bakura was willing to bet it was the latter. He could hardly believe that anyone would sing their child to sleep with such a song, but it was all too close to the song that he heard in the manor.

_Lest the doors open wide,_ he thought as he walked home. _Does it mean the doors that I've been trying to open? The doors that Amane walked through? The lyrics in the book say that others that sleep will wake, too, but in the manner the song says that suffering will be unleashed on all. I…I'm not sure anymore that I'm doing the right thing. But Amane went through there. Doesn't she want me to follow?_

He didn't know anymore.

* * *

"Sounds like it's all connected to sleep," Yugi said. Bakura had called him soon after getting home—after he had checked the line for any trace of static or screaming voices. It was clear now, and the smaller boy was eager to hear his research results.

"It is," Bakura replied. "The priestess was supposed to be sealed in a dream. That's why I'm going to that Manor in my dreams. This Rift that she started, it's spilling out into people's sleep. But why me?"

"You visited her house?" Yugi suggested.

"True, but it has to be more than that. Are you having nightmares? What about Anzu, Honda, or Jounouchi?"

Yugi paused. "No, we're all dream-free," he said after a minute. "I've asked them about it. You're the only one that got caught in this. I hate to say it, but maybe…"

"Maybe it's because of my connection to Zorc," Bakura finished for him. "Maybe because I spent so long being possessed by him…I don't know…that I'm more sensitive to magic and curses? It just doesn't feel right, though. Yoshino Takigawa didn't have any connection to the occult that I can figure out. She just cried about losing her family in the plane crash. She felt guilty for being the only survivor, I guess."

"Maybe that's it," Yugi said. "Didn't you say you've been following your sister into the manor from the beginning?"

Bakura's hand tightened on the receiver. "Yeah…maybe that's the connection. Yoshino's whole family died in a plane crash. I lost my mother and sister to a car wreck. There was a mother and daughter in the first rooms who were searching for their husband and father. So maybe it's loss? But your father's dead too."

"Yeah." Yugi's voice came through strained, and Bakura winced. He should have known better than to mention something like that so callously. "So maybe there is something else at work here, but we're not likely to figure it out now. I do have another story for you, though. Found it at the library today."

"Where do you get all this time to go to the library?"

"Grandpa lets me go since I told him I was helping you with a project." Yugi paused, and Bakura could hear the rustle of flipping pages in the background. "Here it is. An actual study on the legend your tattooed priestess left behind."

"Really!" Bakura sat forward, even though he was on the phone. This could be very interesting.

"It's a legend from the mountains, according to this," Yugi said. "A girl who lost her lover goes to the mountain Master to relieve her pain. On hearing of the girl's pains, the Master engraves a snake and holly tattoo on her own body and assumes the pain. The villagers, hearing of this, visit the Master one after another to relieve their pains as well. Eventually the Master's entire body is covered with tattoos. She who took on so many pains gets trapped in sleep from the pain of the engraved tattoos, and cannot wake. Finally, she is eaten by the tattooed snake."

"Yikes," Bakura said.

"And that was the happy version."

"There's more?"

"Yeah." Bakura could almost see Yugi nodding. "The bad ending starts with the Master being so covered in tattoos that she engraves the next ones in her eyes. Then her tattooed eyes turn to mirror and the pains engraved on the Master are repelled back to the people who engraved them. In the end, every last person is eaten by the snake."

"I like the happy ending better. Even if it's not so happy."

"It might be what's happening now," Yugi pointed out. "The priestess in your dreams, if this story is true enough, put tattoos in her eyes, and now she wants everyone to suffer like she did."

"Or someone else put them there for her," Bakura said. "I think something really terrible happened to her to make her like this."

"Maybe you'll find out tonight," Yugi said.

Bakura sighed. "Maybe. If I don't die first."

"You won't die."

_You can't be sure of that. You don't know what it's really like._ The thought awoke some small part of Bakura that he didn't know was there. That part resented Yugi bitterly, for all that he had been helping Bakura almost from the beginning. He pushed that feeling down, shocked at himself and a little ashamed. "I have to go," he said. "I need to take a shower before I go to bed."

"Stay safe."

_Easy for you to say,_ that resentful little voice said as he hung up the phone. Bakura hissed at himself and went to the bathroom.

* * *

He stood under the water's flow for a long time after he finished bathing. The heat of the water soothed the tension from his muscles, and the sound unwound his high-strung nerves. It was a small moment of peace, the first he had found in over a week. He could almost believe that there was nothing wrong in the world. He could almost there was no world, but for the heat of the water and the sound of it drumming against his skin, the only sound in the apartment.

The only sound except for a tiny scrape, like a nail on a chalkboard except quieter. Instantly all Bakura's tension returned, and he slowly turned to look over his shoulder, praying that nothing was there. _It has to be my imagination. It has to be._

There was a pale hand pressed against the outside of the shower door. Several thick, long spines impaled it, and the tip of one of these scraped against the glass. As he watched, another hand joined it, and then a face came into view, a face with bloody bandages wrapped around empty eye sockets. The spirit opened her mouth in a guttural snarl, and she pushed against the door, slamming it open. Bakura's back hit the wall behind him, and he fell into to the corner, too scared to even scream. The ghost was gone, however, and all he could see beyond the gently swinging shower door was he bathroom, and beyond that was the apartment hall. Dark, silent, and empty.

He turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and sprinted into his room, but nothing else showed itself.

Bakura turned on every light before he went to bed, but it was still a long time before he managed to go to sleep.

* * *

_Cold._

_Snow._

_The sound of a hammer clinking against stakes._

_A man coming toward him down a hall, meat cleaver held high._

_A carpenter standing beside a small altar._

_A long, hall, empty but for the snow drifting in._

He woke to a dream within a dream, though he wasn't aware of it at first. He was in a cage in an octagonal room, and everything around him was devoid of color. But the door was unlocked, and he walked out of it, and then out of the room. Somehow he next found himself in the garden courtyard, now all shades of gray and white. He walked around toward the double doors, and as he passed the entrance to one of the side corridors a shrine maiden appeared, bowing to him. This seemed perfectly natural within this dream, so he passed her without comment and moved on.

No seal bound the doors, so he put his hands on them and pushed, and they opened with ease.

"_It must not be opened."_

Bakura gasped, opening his eyes. He was still in front of the double doors, but they were closed, and there was still a seal on them. Color had returned, and with it the bite of winter's cold and the electric chill of a nearby ghost.

"_That door. The priestess must be sealed away."_

It was the man with the meat cleaver, standing just behind him, and Bakura ducked just in time to feel the weapon whip through the air where his neck had just been. He dodged to the side, pointing his camera behind him in a desperate attempt to drive the ghost back. The shutter clicked uselessly three times, and he dodged again, this time rolling straight back and feeling an unnatural shudder wrack him as he went straight through the attacking spirit.

As he came to his feet, the man was still stumbling forward and slashing at the air, as if he had no idea where his quarry had gone. Bakura took advantage of his confusion and blasted him forward with two shots of the camera.

The ghost turned right around and charged at him. _"You cannot escape!"_

Bakura stood his ground and took one more picture just as the man raised his cleaver to swing. The shot brought him to his knees, and the spirit dropped his weapon to the ground. Once more Bakura clicked the shutter, and a new image came to mind as the spirit wailed its defeat. He saw the stained corridor, the same man he had just fought standing outside the small door that he couldn't open before.

"More sacrifices, more blood," Bakura murmured at the same time as the vanishing ghost. "Why, though? Obviously you can't stop the Rift no matter how many people you kill. Why couldn't you find another way?"

He was asking empty air. With a shake of his head, Bakura turned and went through the door to the storeroom. His next objective was the stained corridor.

The blood stains from the night before still covered the walls and floor of the store room, but no carpenters ran or hid from him. He ignored them as best he could and walked on to the bell hallway, through the entrance room, and into the grave courtyard. His skin prickled when he walked into the the stained corridor, and he looked left just in time to see the man with the meat cleaver (_the Master Builder_, he reminded himself) walking around the corner of the hall.

"_This finishes it."_

With his camera held at the read, Bakura followed him.

The small door that led to the room within the room was still closed, but it was no longer sealed. Bakura hesitated, and from inside he heard the voice of the Master Builder one last time.

"_Rest here, as a cornerstone."_

A horrible gurgling noise came after, and Bakura pulled away. After a full minute of silence, he came forward again, pulling at the door until it creaked open.

The Master Builder knelt inside, his back to the door. Around him was a fresh pool of blood, which also stained the cleaver he still held in one hand. Bakura gagged at the thick metallic smell, but the man did not move at the sound.

_He killed himself,_ the boy realized as he fought back the nausea. _Killing all the other carpenters didn't work, so he made himself a sacrifice, too. And still the Rift spreads. No wonder you're so insistent on finding more. But it's just not working._

Bakura crept around the edges of the wall so he wouldn't step in the pool of blood. There was a trapdoor in the floor in front of the Master Builder, and he wanted to see what was in it.

The blood was creeping to the edges of the door, but Bakura managed to open it before it got wet. Inside were a set of ancient carpentry tools, looking worn and well-used. _Maybe he built the manor with these._ For some reason Bakura abhorred that thought, and he started to slam the trapdoor shut when a flutter of paper caught his eye. He picked it out of the tools and let the door close while he examined it.

It was a map, with a red X marking the very room he now sat in. On the back was a scrawled set of instructions.

_When the Shrine of the Rift fails to stop destruction, build the Shrine of Sleep and pray for the priestess to slumber._

_To keep the Rift from opening into the outside world, the final command must be driven in where the Shrine of the Rift and the Shrine of Sleep connect._

"The final command," Bakura said, looking at the ghost. "That must be you. You stopped the Rift from spreading in the waking world with your sacrifice. At least you accomplished that much. But it's still here. You should have thought about that first." Then he raised his camera and took the man's picture.

A weight lifted from the air that he hadn't even noticed was there. Startled, he looked around the room, and then he stood up and went outside. Nothing seemed different, yet….something was. _Did I…did that just break the final seal?_

Bakura ran through the manor back to the doors in the garden courtyard. There, he found the Master Builder standing in front of the tree, waiting for him.

"But…I just saw you die!" the boy protested. _I am so tired of this spirit._

"_It must be opened,"_ the ghost said. _"The Unleashing must not be allowed to spread."_

Bakura hit him with three shots of the camera before he had taken two steps. "Sorry," he told the ghost as it sank to the ground and dissipated. "I'm opening those doors. I have no other way to get out of this."

If the Master Builder could understand him at all, the ghost gave no idea. Bakura sighed and continued around to the doors, keeping a sharp eye on his surroundings as he did. This was it; the place that everything was pointing him to and every ghost tried to keep him from. Whatever was beyond these doors…it was what bound the power of the tattooed priestess. Here was where Amane had gone, too.

Bakura took a deep breath and pushed open the doors.

Beyond was a large courtyard. At the far end was an old temple. Another building was to the left, but Bakura paid it no attention. He was having a hard enough time trying to breathe. The air here was thick, almost soupy with energy. It pressed on him and around him, and his legs felt like lead as he lifted them to walk down the stairs and across the open space. Two of the blinded women with needles in their hands waited at either side of the door to the shrine, and Bakura stopped, remembering his visitor in the shower that evening. Neither of these made a move toward him, however, or even seemed to realize he was there. After a minute he edged past them, going up to the doors of the temple.

A movement to his left caught his eye, and he looked over to see the pig-tailed shrine maiden standing at the door of the other building, looking over her shoulder at him.

"Amane?" he whispered, and then the world around him faded.

* * *

The pain was everywhere when he awoke. It started in his chest, and quickly it spread across his shoulders and down his arms, wrapping around his abdomen and back. When he looked down, he could see the pattern of snakes and holly appearing even on his legs.

_I'm running out of time,_ he thought.

The phone in the living room began to ring. Between the strident tones, the rain beat relentlessly against his window.


	10. The Piercing of the Soul

_If you haven't read my profile, the reason for the late update is that I now lack a laptop. I used to sit in front of my tv and write chapters as I played the game, but that became impossible when my laptop died. Seeing as how it'll be maybe three years before I can afford a new one, I decided to write them out by hand and then type them up on my mom's. desktop later. All in one night. My hand aches like the devil now. Enjoy._

**_Hour IX: The Piercing of the Soul_**

Bakura didn't jump out of bed and rush to the phone this time. Instead he sat in bed and listened to it ring. After nine tolls, he finally dragged himself to his feet and stumbled into the living room. There he stood, staring at the phone through three more rings, before he finally answered it just to shut it up. "Hello?"

No screaming this time, but static was thick on the line. He held the receiver to his ear for a minute longer, hoping that someone was on the other end, but all he heard through the static was a low, indistinguishable mutter. With a sigh, he set the receiver down.

The phone immediately rang again. Bakura jumped out of his skin and snatched the receiver from its cradle. "What?" he snapped.

"Bakura-kun?" It was Yugi, his voice confused even through the smattering of static that stayed on the line.

Bakura took a deep breath and ran a shaking hand through his hair. It came away sticky with sweat. "Yugi. I'm sorry. I'm just…"

"On edge," the other boy finished for him. If he noticed that Bakura had rudely left the honorific off his name, he didn't mention it. "I know. I'm sorry if I startled you. How bad are the dreams now?"

"They're…" The little resentful voice that had popped up yesterday suddenly blossomed into a white ball of anger that settled in his chest. "They're none of your business."

"Bakura-kun? Are you feeling okay?"

Bakura closed his eyes and dropped into the nearest chair. _What am I doing? What am I saying?_ "I'm not well," he told Yugi. "I'm sorry, Yugi-kun. Everything must be getting to me. I feel…not right."

"All the more reason to figure out how to stop this," Yugi said. "Did you get any more clues from the dreams?"

So Bakura told him about all that had happened the previous night.

"The carpenter's were all sacrificed," Yugi said. "No wonder they ran from you so much. They were all killed to seal the priestess."

"A seal that I broke, not that it did much good," Bakura said.

"So maybe you can get to her now. The priestess, I mean. Maybe we should go to the library and—"

"No!" The flash of irritation was too sharp to ignore. "No more research. I'm past that. Whatever happens now, I deal with it alone."

"Bakura-kun, you can't handle this alone. I can come over around noon—"

"I do not need your help, Pharaoh!"

The silence that followed ran in his ears. Only a woman's voice broke it, cutting through the static. _"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!"_

"The pharaoh's gone, Bakura-kun," Yugi said, almost too soft to hear. He seemed not to hear the screaming woman. He only sounded hurt.

Bakura closed his eyes against the pain in his friend's voice. _Oh, how could I? Why did I say that to him? _Six months later, Yugi still avoided the subject of Atem. The loss was still too fresh, too raw.

"_Let me out. Let me out! Please, let me out!"_

He couldn't think. His emotions were whirling in a confused jumble, and the crying woman's voice stretched his nerves taut. "I-I'm sorry," he said, and he slammed the phone down.

This time, it stayed silent.

* * *

He called in sick to work, and it didn't really feel like a lie. He kept thinking back to his conversation with Yugi as the day wore on, and each time he did his confusion grew until his stomach roiled with nausea.

Why did he feel so angry at Yugi? The other boy had done nothing but help him.

_He hurt me worse than he can ever comprehend._

Which was such a ridiculous thought. Yugi was his closest friend.

_He's my greatest enemy._

He had been Zorc's greatest enemy. For that matter, it wasn't even Yugi, but the pharaoh who had stood strongest against Zorc for millennia. Zorc was no longer in him, and Yugi and the pharaoh were not the same person.

_Pharaoh's reincarnation. Pharaoh's vessel. Pharaoh's lighter half. All my enemy._

For the life of him, he couldn't think of a reason why he felt that way.

Bakura was so wrapped up in his inner turmoil that he forgot about the dreams until he fell asleep, long past midnight.

* * *

_Cold._

_Snow._

_The sound of hammer striking stake._

_A pig-tailed shrine maiden, crouching in a corner._

_An altar lit with candles, round mirror standing in the middle._

Bakura was standing when he came to his senses, just inside the doors that he had finally unsealed last night. The air pressed on him in a thick miasma, drowning all colors into stark white and deep black, with barely any shades of gray. The weight of it settled on his chest until he could hardly breathe, and the feel of it prickled the back of his neck and raised goosebumps on his arms and legs. The Camera Obscura hummed along with the menace in the air, and Bakura shuddered.

This power…this is what the priestess really is. This is why they sealed her away, and I broke that seal. What have I done?

But he couldn't go back and reseal it. His only choice was to go forward and find the last secrets of the mansion. Maybe he could find some way to put the priestess to rest. _Maybe I can find Amane. My Amane._

So he started forward, footsteps dragging through the soupy air as he crossed the courtyard to the temple. He kept his eyes wide open, but if any ghosts were present, he couldn't see them through the miasma. He wasn't sure that he would be able to sense them, either.

Three steps led up to the wooden double doors, which turned out to be locked. Bakura frowned at the distinct sense of déjà vu, and then he remembered how the dream had ended the previous night. Turning, he strained his eyes toward the tall building to his left.

Someone might have stood in front of it, but with the lack of color it was hard to tell. Bakura jumped down the temple steps anyway, one hand on the camera as he walked to the other building.

He hesitated when the figure shifted, but then he saw the black lines of pig-tailed braids against a white shirt. _Amane._ He tried to call to her, but the miasma choked off his words. It was all he could do to breathe. The effort it took to walk made him light-headed and dizzy.

The shrine maiden stepped through the doors as he approached. Bakura heaved himself up the six steps and pushed against the latch, stumbling into the room beyond.

He had expected a reprieve from the miasma, but it was just as thick within the room as outside. The bright white beam of his flashlight revealed stone walls and a dirt floor, with nothing in the room except a rickety wooden staircase in the center. Bakura moved over to peer up at the next landing, and he nearly jumped back when he saw Amane staring back down at him. She vanished as he gathered his wits, but the sound of sobbing reached his ears from above.

Bakura clung to the rail as he ascended. He had to stop halfway up to catch his breath, and again when he got to the second floor. He looked around as he struggled for air; the staircase continued up to a third level, and bookshelves lined the walls of the narrow room. The crying still came from farther up.

Unwilling to try the stairs again for a few minutes, Bakura circled the room and inspected the books. Most were too old and damaged to read, but a few had help up well enough that he dared to open them and pick out a few passages.

…The door to the other shore must be opened with the mirror which can reflect the priestess' pain. The Mirror of Loss which reflects this pain shall be placed in the Shrine of Loss. She must break it with her own hands and cast her love away…

…_Use the purifying light to light the darkness. The blue flame glimmers faintly in the darkness, and purifies the miasma…_

…_Those who would offer their pain to the priestess must allow the red and indigo ink of living and dead blood to mix together to become the ink of the soul, which is then used to tattoo their pain into the priestess…_

…_The tattooed priestess who cannot enter the sleep of no regrets must be stripped of her tattoos and sent to the other shore…_

_…The tattooed priestess who will not sleep, who cannot endure the pain, will be enshrouded in misery and cast into the Rift—_

Bakura slammed the book shut and dropped it. His heartbeat had returned to something resembling normal, though his lungs still ached for air. He decided to risk killing himself going up the stairs rather than stay here with these horrid books. He could hardly ignore the crying for much longer, either.

The third floor looked to be a storeroom. Shelves holding an assortment of objects lined one wall, while in front of him were a dresser and a screen. The sobbing sounds came from behind the screen.

Bakura moved around it to find Amane the shrine maiden, curled up in the corner and rocking back and forth, her face in her hands. He crouched beside her and held out a hand, but stopped just short of touching her. "What's wrong?" he asked.

The girl hiccupped and looked around at him, her face shining with tears. _"Save the two,"_ she begged, and then she disappeared.

Bakura fell back as something clattered to the floor where she had sat. Nothing else happened, so he reached out and took the objects. The first was a book—a diary, it seemed. The second was a pale candle with a design on the side that he couldn't make out. He had no matches, but the candle sprang to life at his touch, glowing with a soft blue flame. Its light drove back the monochrome colors and heavy air of the miasma, and Bakura nearly doubled over with relief as the pressure vanished from his chest. He took a moment just to enjoy breathing, and then he sat back and opened the diary.

My mother told me that I have an older brother. His name is Kaname, and he lives in a house on the outside. In the Kuze house, they throw away boys, so he was sent outside. She told me many times that this was a secret.

_My brother has the same earring as my mother. They're beautiful earrings that she got from Father. Mother gave it to him so that no matter where he is, he can hear her voice. I wonder if he can hear my voice too. I want to see him._

_Reika was made into a priestess. I help take care of the priestess. She tells me about the outside. She says when she talks the pain isn't as bad. I'm glad that I can be of some help._

_The priestess has an earring just like Mother's. She says it was a present from a good friend, so that she can hear his voice no matter where she is. I think that friend is Kaname. The priestesss talks about him a lot._

_Kaname snuck in with the people who came to ease their pains. He said he wants to see the priestess, just once. It is against the code, but as she is going to perform the Rite of Commandment soon, she won't be able to leave again. I want to help them meet, just once._

_Kaname went into the shrine. To the priestess' place. Men cannot go into the shrine. I'm sure the mistress will be upset._

_My brother hasn't come back. I'm almost out of purification candles._

_He hasn't come back. I'm sure the head of the family is angry that a man entered the shrine. I know he won't be forgiven._

_He hasn't come back. He hasn't come back. I wanted to talk with him more. I wanted to stay with him forever. With Kaname and with Reika. Everybody together._

Bakura put down the diary and squeezed his eyes shut. _Everybody together. I want to talk to my sister, to my mother. Just once. _It was small wonder that Amane was helping him. She knew his pain. Perhaps she even mistook him for her older brother. It was certainly strange coincidence that she shared his sister's name.

Reika—the tattooed priestess. Kaname, who went into a forbidden place to see her and never came back. _Something horrible happened to them. Something that put the tattoos in the priestess' eyes._ Something that he now had to figure out. Bakura stood, blinking away his tears and picking up the candle. On the far end of the room was a half-open door, and he went to it. Just outside was a wooden platform in the roof, slick with crusted snow. Five feet from the edge was a level section of tiles in the temple's roof.

Bakura's mouth went dry. _The doors to the temple are locked, and I have to get in somehow. I can't stop here. The gap is not that wide; I'm sure I can make it._

The mental reassurance did nothing to slow his thundering heart. With a gulp, Bakura took a few measured strides to the edge of the roof and looked down. The ground was much farther away than he had thought, and he backed away quickly, closing his eyes against a wave of vertigo.

_You idiot. You can't do this with your eyes closed. And you've jumped much greater gaps over much higher falls._

The voice came from the same place that his inexplicable anger at Yugi did. Bakura didn't bother to question it this time. He simply took that annoyance and the confidence that came with it and ran.

He leaped the gap with such ease that he almost collided with the upward slant of the roof on the other side. The tiles here were coated with more ice than the wood, and he went to one knee as his foot slipped out from under him. A spike of fear shot through his chest as he slid back toward the roof's edge, but his foot found purchase after just a couple of inches. He climbed shakily to his feet and started the walk around the temple's roof, praying that no ghosts would attack him.

None did. He made it to the far side of the temple with nothing more than a few scrapes from slipping on the tiles. There he found another wooden platform and a door, and he gratefully slipped inside.

The top room of the temple was bare except for a few empty boxes and a stair leading into the rafters below. Bakura looked at the thick beams with a shudder, remembering his last expedition onto rafters, but the ladder to the first floor was on the other side of the room. He had no choice but to cross them. He tried not to look down, but he caught glimpses of the room anyway as he inched his way along the beams. It was large, taking up the entire structure of the temple. In the middle of the floor was an altar, and behind it was an area partitioned off with netting. The partition surrounded a stone slab, dark with stains. Two more stone slabs sat on either side of the room, each one bearing body-shaped bundles stabbed through with thick needles. Bakura was busy trying to look at the beam in front of him instead of those bundles when a voice below him made him freeze.

_"Prepare the priestess for the Rite of Commandment. She must be impaled soon."_

Slowly, he sank to his knees and put the candle down so he could grip the beam. It continued to burn, keeping the miasma at bay as he shined his flashlight into the partitioned area below him.

A pale woman clothed in white and blue lay on the slab, unmoving. Two other women hovered over her, their needle-pierced hands outstretched. Bakura jerked back and nearly lost his balance. Splinters dug into his palm, and the camera swung away from his neck, hitting the purifying candle. He nearly fell again as he caught it before it rolled over the edge. He knelt on the beam for several seconds to allow his heart and breathing to slow, and then he risked a peek at the floor below.

None of the ghosts had moved. They seemed oblivious to all the noise he had made. Bakura breathed a sigh of relief and stood to continue the journey.

He made it to a platform that lined on one wall, and there he found another purifying candle lying in a corner. That brought another wave of relief, for his first had burned to barely more than a nub. He pocketed the new candle and walked over to the ladder at the far end of the platform, hugging the wall all the while. Halfway down, the voice spoke again.

_"Let the priestess never awaken from her dreams for all eternity."_

It sounded like the same woman who had accused Amane of breaking a commandment and later attacked him with a multitude of arms. The mistress? The head of the family? Bakura swept the room with his flashlight beam but saw no ghosts. Even those within the partition had disappeared. With nothing else to do, he jumped down the last few feet to the ground and walked over to the altar. A small wooden shrine stood in the middle, surrounded by the bowls and candles of various Buddhist rituals. In front of the shrine stood a round pedestal, and in front of the altar itself was a book resting on a pillow. Bakura picked it up and sneezed at the dust that flew as he opened it.

_The Piercing of the Soul_

_If the feelings of loss for those who crossed to the other side begin to spill into dreams, they shall bring great trouble into this world. Those feelings of loss must be etched into the priestess as tattoos in the Piercing of the Soul._

_The tattooed priestess who had been engraved with the pain shall then bear that pain into her sleep and calm the troubles of this world._

Bakura closed the book. "It's like the legends that Yugi found," he said, ignoring the part of him that snapped _that the pharaoh couldn't possibly help you. The pharaoh can't do anything right._ "She took everyone's pain and carved them on herself, but now she's turning it all back on us." He looked at the altar again, and then frowned and stepped closer when he noticed writing on the round pedestal.

_Offer up the mirror with the holly of the priestess._

"Mirror?" Bakura straightened, remembering a passage from one of the books in the storeroom. _The mirror that she engraves with her own pain and then breaks. Does it mean that? But how can I offer it if its broken? How do I even find it?_ He turned away, and two needle-pierced women descended on him.

He didn't even have time to scream. Bakura just dropped his flashlight and brought his camera up, pressing the shutter before he even bothered to aim and somehow catching them both in the blast. They fell back with identical shrieks and vanished.

They weren't defeated, however; Bakura could still feel the prickle on his neck, and the camera vibrated in his grip. The purifying candle chose that moment to burn out, and he fumbled to get the next one out of his pocket before the miasma closed in.

Its blue flame sprang to life just as he heard a growl, and he spun to snap a photo of one of the women just as she charged at him, and she fell back with a moan. As he lowered the camera, however, two thorny hands wrapped around his head from behind and tore into his face.

Bakura twisted away with a scream, clutching his eyes. They didn't seem to be bleeding, but when he opened them, the room was in darkness. A growl from the side alerted him, and he swung the camera wildly in that direction, pressing the shutter throughout the arc. He heard something squeal, but something else hit him full force, sending a wave of numbing cold through his body.

_I can't fight like this._

_Oh, yes I can. I've faced worse._

The part of his consciousness that had tormented him all day now seemed like a lifeline, and he latched onto it and all the anger and recklessness that came with it. A pitiful moan sounded behind him, and he ducked and whirled, pointing the camera up at his attacker. His vision was returning, and he was able to see the needle woman standing there, arms held out in a prickly embrace that he had barely managed to avoid. He blew her away with two well-timed snaps of the camera.

_One down._

The second woman rushed at him with a snarl, and he twisted but didn't quite make it out of her way. Her arm grazed his side, and he managed to snap a picture of her back. He also managed to keep his balance through the ensuing wave of dizziness. He turned slowly, scanning the room as it came back into focus until he spotted the ghost. She stood in a corner, head cocked as though she were listening for something. Bakura took a step forward and raised the camera, but she vanished.

He took two more steps forward and whirled as she reappeared, once again trying to blind him from behind. One good shot sent her wailing to the floor, where she slumped forward and dissipated.

Bakura walked over to his flashlight and picked it up. A moment's exploration revealed nothing more of interest in the temple. The door into the partitioned area wouldn't budge, so he gave up and went to the temple doors, unlocking them and stepping outside.

He had barely made his way down the steps when the dream ended and he woke up to the pain of spreading tattoos and the ceaseless drum of rain.


End file.
